[EM] WDS reply to Dave Ketchum elementary questions re range voting

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 04:01 AM 8/16/2005, Dave Ketchum wrote:
It has heard of NY and lever machines - exactly what I vote on and think 
about.  Says they are able to handle elections with up to 300 candidates.

>With range chewing up slots 10 times as fast as plurality, capacity 
>shrinks to 30 candidates.

This assumes that the granularity is 10 or ll, depending. Range reduces to 
Approval with granularity 2 and requires only one slot, same as plurality. 
(no vote is zero, a vote is 1).

Adding improved granularity requires an additional slot per granularity 
unit per candidate, *unless* multiple slot presses per candidate are 
allowed, which would *add* the slot values together. I am concerned about 
the complexity of voter education here, but it might not be so bad. The 
instructions might say something like "Press additional levers to refine 
your rating, maximum rating is 7". And then the slots would be labelled 
"4", "2", and "1".

If this were practical (and voter education is the only issue, it is 
practical for the machines, I am sure), then granularity 8 would require 
three slots, granularity 16 would require four. Four would not be bad at all.

But if additive voting were considered impractical, then simply having two 
slots would be a refinement on Approval. One slot might be labeled "Top" 
and the next "Acceptable." And they could be interpreted either as simple 
Approval with additional information for later analysis, or as Range (or, 
indeed, as Asset). granularity eleven (which is what requires ten slots) is 
probably overkill, and definitely not politic to propose at this time. 
Granularity 4 (two slots) could be enough, 8 would be more refined, and 16 
(four slots) really could be overkill.