[EM] range ballots chew up slots; "unsupported" range voting claims

[Dave Ketchum]

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:13:54 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote, in part:

> At 09:05 PM 8/18/2005, Warren Smith wrote:
> 
>> As was recently pointed out, it is correct that with range ballots
>> run on ordinary plurality voting machines, slots (e.g. "levers" on
>> NY-style machines) get "chewed up" 10 times faster than
>> with plain plurality voting.  Assuming 10 levels.
>> With L levels, L times faster.
>>
>> Consequently if enough elections or large enough elections, more
>> machines would be needed, or you'd have to have fewer levels.
>>
>> So, not so fun.
> 

As I wrote before, the claim that you could do range on a machine built 
for Plurality is stretching it.
         The words above about more machines is also a stretch since, at 
least in NY, we have a law against confusing the voters by scattering the 
ballot across multiple machines.


> I disagree with Mr. Smith about the way in which no presses would be 
> interpreted; for quite a number of reasons, some substantial and some 
> political, I oppose averaging only expressed votes, but would instead 
> interpret no presses as a rating of zero, i.e., the lowest rating. 


I EMPHATICALLY agree, for it should be easy for the voter to dispose of 
those to be grouped as least liked.


>> I do not especially recommend running range elections in this style.
>> I would much prefer it if there were voting machines specifically designed
>> for range voting.  However, because range voting CAN be done on
>> plurality machines as a stopgap measure, that makes it a lot
>> more adoptible than many other forms of voting, for
>> example IRV, which CANNOT be done on many kinds of plurality machines.


Note that if you can manage IRV, then you can do Condorcet, for both have 
the same ballot requirements.

BUT, as Jan Kok noted, neither can be done on NY's lever machines - those 
machines only count how many times each lever is depressed on election 
day, and these methods require knowing what combinations were said on 
individual ballots.
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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