[EM] the "bullet voting" bogeyman for range/approval voting

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Aug 28, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Michael Rouse wrote:

> The "degenerate to plurality voting" concern is easy to disprove --  
> even plurality doesn't degenerate to pure plurality voting, because  
> in every plurality election there are overvotes.

so up is down, black is white, and plurality isn't plurality?

> In fact, in the infamous Florida debacle of 2000, there were more  
> overvotes than people who voted for Ralph Nader -- 111,251 overvotes  
> versus about 97,000 for Nader (it's sadly amusing to see people  
> complain about Nader being in the race while ignoring an even bigger  
> issue). In other words,  people accidentally cast an Approval ballot  
> more often than they purposely voted for the "spoiler." I can't  
> imagine any scenario where there would be    fewer Approval ballots,  
> if they were counted instead of being tossed out.
>
> Here's a USAToday link of Florida overvotes in 2000: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-05-10-overvotetable.htm

i am very aware of the overvote thing in the Florida 2000 election.   
the overvotes that i am concerned about are those where the voter  
marked the box for a candidate and then wrote in the very same  
candidate's name in the Write-In slot.  according to Florida law that  
vote should be counted upon manual recount (and a manual recount  
should ensue when the margin is less than 0.25% and 537 votes out of 5  
million easily satisfies that) because the intent of the voter is  
clear, and then Al Gore won that election by 170 (according to the  
media recount) and history would be far different (and better).  i am  
still convinced that that election was stolen, particularly after the  
Bush v. Gore decision of 12/12/2000.

all this has nothing to do with the fact that voters don't like  
forsaking their favorite candidate and will be less likely to mark a  
ballot in such a way as to harm their favorite candidate.  with either  
score or approval vote, you may harm you favorite candidate by non- 
zero scoring (or approving) any other candidate.


--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."