[EM] 10% as much as possible... :)

[Warren Smith]

>Rob Brown:
How much do you want your vote to count (check one):

( ) As much as possible
( ) 90% of as much as possible
( ) 80% of as much as possible
( ) 70% of as much as possible
( ) 60% of as much as possible
( ) 50% of as much as possible
( ) 40% of as much as possible
( ) 30% of as much as possible
( ) 20% of as much as possible
( ) 10% of as much as possible

--amusing.

I might actually want this feature except that the benefit (i.e, amount
I want it) is small compared to the cost of changing voting machines to allow it.

But with range voting, the cost is zero since this ability is
already there, and the benefit remains about the same.
You in your 10% scenario are attacking the idea of making voting machines
more complicated to gain a tiny benefit.  But in the range voting
case, "fixing" range voting actually is the worst of both worlds - more
complicated machines AND lose the benefit of greater voter expressivity.

Here is another angle to look at the same thing - many advocates of ranked-ballot voting
want the voter to have the ability to "truncate" his ballot, i.e. to refuse
to express preferences among some of the candidates.  Again, this is a voluntary
downweighting of one's vote, and a rather peculiar kind too.
There are others who insist the voter rank all candidates, in fact that is the law in
most of Australia.

With range voting as defined on the CRV web page
     http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv
the voter has maximum freedom.
Voter can:
  1* score all candidates.
  2* use a subrange of the full range thus downweighting his vote if he (perhaps peculiarly)
      wishes to be insignificant.  Arbitrary choice of downweighting factor.
  3* score only some candidates, expressing ignorance about all the others,
          with arbitrary choice of the subset to score.
  4* score only some candidates, giving all the others zeros ("truncation" - only more expressive).
  5* score only some candidates, giving all the others 37s.
These capabilities are not present in other common systems.  For example,
in all ranked ballot systems I know of,  it is simply impossible to do (3),
or to do (2) or (5).  The instructions from CRV recommend giving your favorite
the full 99 and your most-hated the full 0, so that voters who follow
that recommendation will never downweight.  But they can if they insist.

wds