[EM] Problems with Range and suggested solutions

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

It came back to me yesterday what I -- and some others -- have seen 
as the biggest problem with Range voting, and also a solution that I 
think I also expressed somewhere. But I tend to write way too much 
and sometimes I think good ideas have been buried in fluff.

Range rewards those who exaggerate, it may weaken the vote of those 
who do not use the full range of ratings.

Consider two candidates within an election, A and B, and two voters.

Voter 1 rates A and B as 99 and 20. One might analyze this vote as 
indicating that the voter clearly approves of A and considers B as 
possibly better than Genghis Khan.

Voter 2 rates A and B as 0 and 99.

In Range, voter 2's ratings outweigh those of voter 1.

This is essentially a kind of violation of one-person, one-vote.

It is fixable by using granularity-2 range, i.e. Approval, or 
partially by normalizing the votes. I think basic normalization 
should be done regardless in Range, that is, the maximum vote cast 
should be normalized to 1 and the minimum vote cast to 0. However, in 
an election with more than two candidates, this would not solve the 
problem, because there might be a third candidate who was truly 
awful, and Voter 1 might rate that candidate as zero, leaving the 
same problem in the pairwise race between A and B.

So to go the distance, I'd suggest that Range ballots be analyzed 
pairwise, and that they be normalized within the pairs.... I have not 
considered all the implications, for sure. But if this problem cannot 
be solved, it could be fatal for higher granularity Range.

There is another problem which has been noted: if Range averages only 
expressed ratings, a dark horse candidate may win by being rated at 
max by a relatively few voters. Again, one election outcome like this 
(unless the majority was pleasantly surprised) could kill Range 
forever (in public elections).

The public is indeed, as Warren points out, familiar with Range, but 
the common application is in rating athletes or contestants, as in 
the Olympics, and the rating is done by supposedly neutral judges who 
do try to follow some kind of common standard. Such judges are not 
supposed to have a "favorite" whose rankings they would highly 
elevate above the normal for the actual performance. I'm sure that 
there is some level of violation of this, judges being human, but 
nothing like what would be routine in public elections.

So Range should total ratings, not average only expressed ratings. 
And if ratings are normalized, the system really does resemble 
Approval with relatively harmless intermediate options. I kind of 
like Mr. Ossipoff's suggestion of votes of -1, 0, and +1. I think 
people would very clearly understand that. (And, again, I have not 
examined all the implications; for example, should granularity-4 
range (Ossipoff's suggestion is that, because there is also the "no 
rating" option) be normalized?)

But another option is granularity three, which could be labelled -1 
and 1. No vote would be counted as zero.