[EM] Random thought on Range Voting

[Rob LeGrand]

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.

=====
Rob LeGrand, psephologist
rob at approvalvoting.org
Citizens for Approval Voting
http://www.approvalvoting.org/


		
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