[EM] Endorsement of Range Voting from Mike Ossipoff

[Jan Kok]

Mike Ossipoff sent the following statement to me with the intention
that it be posted in the Endorsements section of the recently created
Center for Range Voting (CRV) web site.

The current location of the CRV web site is
http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/RangeVoting.html.

If you would like to get active and promote Range Voting for use in
public elections, please visit the CRV web site and join the
associated newsgroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rangevoting.

Cheers,
- Jan Kok

===== Endorsement of Range Voting from Mike Ossipoff =====

I was a participant in the election-methods mailing list since its
inception. I was one of its founding members. In fact, it was I who
suggested forming the "Single-Winner Committee" that evolved into the
elecion-methods (EM) mailing list, which now has international membership.

My voting system articles can be found at the URL:
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html

I've made many suggestions and proposals about voting systems and criteria
for evaluating them. Some people like my criteria and agree with my voting
system proposals, and some don't, but I'm well-known in Internet voting
system circles.

Having worked with, discussed, and debated voting systems since 1983, I've
now retired from the subject.

When I retire from a subject, the retirement is complete, but I wanted to
make one exception, and post to this endorsement page of the Range Voting
website.

In recent years I've often said that Range Voting shares Approval's merits,
while probably being a much more winnable public proposal, due to
Range-Voting's great public familiarity. Wwho hasn't been asked to rate
something from 1 to 10? Of course RV more typically would use 0 to 10, -10
to 10, etc. Some Olympic events are judged by Range Voting, with ratings
from 0 to 10.

I've often argued that Range Voting is probably the most promising place to
apply voting system reform effort, because of its  great familiarity, and
because, merit-wise, it's one of the best proposals.

Range Voting is sometimes referred to as Cardinal Ratings (CR), or "The
point system".

Approval is a simple version of RV. I've often suggested that if someone
wants to propose Appoval, they should first introduce RV, and then introduce
Approval as a type of RV. But the more wide-range RV versions seem more
winnable.

Before quitting here, I should mention that I suspect that people would
enjoy the idea of being able to give negative point assignments, and so the
RV versions such as -10 to 10 might be especially popular. I should add that
all of the RV versions are strategically equivalent to eachother. It makes
no practical difference which is enacted. Choice among them should be based
entirely on what seems more winnable with the public. Of course polling
should guide that judgement, but my bet is on the methods with wider ranges
than Approval, especially the ones allowing negative point assignments.

One last thing. A simple, but potentially likeable RV version would be the
-1,0,1 version. If no mark indicates a 0 rating, then -1,0,1 could be
implemented with the same ballots and count machinery used in our initiative
voting, in which we can vote yes or no on a list of initiatives.

Well, this posting, the one exception to my retirement, is my last voting
system discussion. Let's hope that RV succeeds. It's great that there's an
RV website and advocacy organization now. I wish that the Approval
organizations would include general RV as a proposal, since Approval is an
RV version. The RV effort and the Approval effort are really one effort, and
those two movements should combine their strength and resources as a single
organization. At the very least the RV and Approval websites should exchange
links.

Mike Ossipoff