[EM] Advantages of CR style ballots

[Bart Ingles]

Richard Moore wrote:
> 
> Forest Simmons wrote:
> 
> > Furthermore, the lack of constraint makes it harder for a voter to foul
> > the ballot. In other words, a voter can hardly violate non-existent
> > constraints.  Which is harder to mess up ... lone mark or Approval?  A
> > lone mark voter who doesn't notice the (rather ridiculous) "one mark only"
> > instruction can accidently foul his ballot if he likes two of the
> > candidates.
> 
> I've often thought of last year's butterfly ballot fiasco as a perfect
> example
> of this principle. If the Gore+Buchanan ballots had been counted as approval
> ballots, they would have counted 1 for Gore, 1 for Buchanan. The error
> in the
> Buchanan votes would not have made a difference for Buchanan but the correct
> inclusion of the Gore votes could have made a difference for Gore.
> (Presumably,
> the number of Buchanan voters accidentally marking Gore would have been as
> insignificant as the number of Buchanan voters in the general population.)
> 
> Could lone mark balloting be disenfranchising more voters than is generally
> realized?
> 
>   -- Richard


I agree completely.  I seem to recall that here in Santa Clara county
(California), undervotes and overvotes account for approximately equal
numbers of invalidated ballots. And as you point out, the majority of
overvoted ballots should still contain perfectly good information with
respect to the frontrunners.  Invalidating these ballots does more harm
than good.

Bart