[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:39 PM 12/6/2005, rob brown wrote:
>Hmmm, I thought fixed scale was rather obvious, if not from the name 
>"range", but just from the absurdity of the idea of being able to 
>give it any weight whatsoever ("a million!" "infinity!"  "infinity 
>times two!" "infinity times infinity!"....)

Right.

>I believe this discussion started after the acknowledgement from the 
>range voting people that range voting, even on a fixed scale, even 
>if normalized, gives people the choice as to how strongly to express 
>their opinions for the candidates that are neither their favorite 
>nor least favorite.

Yes, it does. They have that choice. They can take it or not.

>   Even worse, it does so in a way that does not make it clear that 
> they may be compromising their own interests by "downweighting" their vote.

Depends. When we actually come to Range implementations, this would 
be something to pay attention to. It's really a question of ballot 
design. But it is far from clear that a Range voter is "compromising 
their interests" by voting an intermediate vote for a candidate about 
whom they do not care strongly.

Remember, under the present system, they don't have any choice at all....

>Voting anything other than 1 or 10 (or whatever the range is) is 
>downweighting.

That is, one's vote will not have the maximum effect on the average. 
But, in fact, one's vote is strengthening the possibility that the 
candidate will have just that score in the outcome. Give the 
candidates the scores you want them to receive!

However, yes, in an "I want my way" environment, one may wish to vote 
extremes. But there is a cost to this, which is that the ballot 
becomes an inaccurate expression of the voter's views, and that can 
have undesired consequences.