[EM] Random thought on Range Voting

[Alex Small]

Rob-
 
If the requirement was vote for NO MORE THAN n candidates then I agree, it would be an improvement on plurality.  If, however, jealousy motivate a rule of vote for EXACTLY n candidates, then it would arguably be worse.
 
You do raise a good point about unintended consequences and possible demands for "reform".  I wonder if Majority Choice Approval might be more appealing to some people.
 
Another possibility for range voting:  Say we implement it in the {-1,0,1} version.  I know that strategically it's equivalent to {0,1,2}, but psychologically a lot of people might see something different about voting AGAINST a candidate.  Perhaps the public would accept a limit where you can only vote FOR one candidate, but you can vote AGAINST as many as you like, and there's no limits on how many candidates you vote neither for nor against.


Message: 4
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 09:41:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Rob LeGrand 
Subject: [EM] Random thought on Range Voting
To: Election Methods Mailing List 
Cc: "Warren D. Smith" 
Message-ID: <20050103174137.50631.qmail at web11001.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

It has been claimed that Range Voting might be an easier sell than
Approval as a voting reform, which could be true. And I understand
that some Range advocates see the fact that many voters would vote
sincerely as a good thing. But since strategic voters would have
more power in a Range election and might be seen as "cheaters" by
the sincere voters, I think there would likely be a public demand
for restrictions on voting candidates at the extremes, turning
Range into something more like Borda.

When I advised the Free State Project (www.freestateproject.org) on
voting systems for their choose-the-state-to-move-to election, they
initially wanted to use cumulative voting. I managed to convince
them that cumulative reduces to plurality when voters are
strategic, but then they offered to add restrictions such as "you
can't give more than half of your votes to any one candidate",
which would make the system worse. I believe restrictions for
Range Voting such as "you can't give any two candidates the same
rating" (when the number of allowed ratings is finite and fairly
small) would be intuitively appealing to many voters who would like
to vote sincerely and want to force others to do so. Approval
Voting makes it obvious that it is natural and acceptable to vote
at the extremes and so would offer no such temptation to tinker
with the system.

How could Approval be tinkered with after adoption? Although I see
it as unlikely, some voters might want to limit the number of
allowed approvals. But allowing n approvals in a race would allow
n + 1 parties to compete fairly in that race, which is still a
strict improvement over plurality.
		
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