[EM] RE : Naive question about Range Voting -- why 0-99 and not 0-100?

[Monkey Puzzle]

On 20 Nov 2006 19:27:08 -0800, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>
> At 03:44 PM 11/20/2006, Monkey Puzzle wrote:
>>As he states in the paper, most people seem to understand 0-100 just
>>fine, but a few do not -- they think that all the scores MUST sum to
>>100.
>
> The only reason I can see for 0-99 vs 0-100 is that it adds another
> digit. This increases ballot complexity by 50%, quite a bit for just
> one point more in granularity.

There is one excellent reason to have either 0-99 or 0-100.  A range
voting ballot can be interpreted as

    Range Voting
    Approval
    Condorcet (Schulze, DMC, CWA, etc.)
    ER-IRV.

If a range voting ballot is used, I think all of these tabulations
should be made.  I think it would be eye opening for voters and
politicians to see just what the alternatives would be, and not get
locked into a single method.

>
> To me, the *real* plan is to push Approval Voting, which is Range
> 2. (Some argue that Range will, in practice, reduce to Approval
> anyway, with people voting the extremes; while certainly some people
> will do this, I don't think this is an argument against Range in
> itself.)

I agree that Approval would be a good first step toward reform.  I
simply want to give voters the option of seeing beyond the first step.

>
> One there is Approval -- which is really very simple to implement,
> the ballots don't change except for a few words of instruction --
> then people will want to express more sophisticated votes. I've
> argued that the first improvement over standard Approval is a
> Favorite option. It would not be used, necessarily, in determining
> the winner, but would allow better analysis of results, plus it
> could be used for campaign finance distributions when they are based
> on vote counts. (Otherwise Approval votes for a major party
> candidate may be unreasonably reduced because the voter doesn't want
> to donate to that party. Plus determining how to distribute funds,
> without a Favorite, is in itself a thorny problem.
>
> How's this for a slogan:
>
> Count All the Votes!

It would sound good to anyone who doesn't still hold a grudge about
Illinois in 1960.

Have a nice thanksgiving, I won't be back till 2007.

MP
-- 
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