[EM] Advantages of CR style ballots

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2001, 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
> 

Let's have some of those law suits that Bart was talking about!

Forest