[EM] Has this idea been considered?

[Andrew Myers]

On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Russ Paielli wrote:
> As I wrote a couple days ago, I strongly suspect that any vote 
> counting rules beyond simple addition will be extremely difficult to 
> sell on a large scale. IRV may be a counterexample, but I suspect that 
> (1) it has only been adopted in very "liberal" cities, and (2) it will 
> never gain traction for major public elections.
>
> The more I think about it, the more I am starting to think that Range 
> Voting is the answer. I'm sure Warren will be glad to hear that! One 
> great advantage of Range is its ultra-simple counting rules. Its only 
> real disadvantage is the equipment requirements, but those are not 
> insurmountable.
>
> An open issue about Range is, of course, how many rating levels should 
> be used. A "natural" choice is 10, but anything from about 5 to 10 or 
> so seems reasonable to me.
>
> As I said before, I am very concerned about the large number of 
> candidates in the Republican presidential primary. I would love to see 
> Range Voting used there. That won't happen, of course, but if 
> Republicans end up largely unhappy with their candidate (as they were 
> with McCain), the silver lining to that could will be an opportunity 
> to promote Range Voting to Republicans.
To me, Range remains a non-starter for political settings, though I can 
see some valid uses.

I have implicitly argued that the real barrier to adoption of other 
voting method is simply the complexity of constructing one's ballot. 
Range voting is more complex than producing an ordering on candidates. 
For me the problem of determining my own utility for various candidates 
is quite perplexing;  I can't imagine the "ordinary voter" finding it 
more pleasant.

Range also exposes the possibility of strategic voting very explicitly 
to the voters. Only a chump casts a vote other than 0 or 10 on a 
10-point scale. Range creates an incentive for dishonesty.

So if the lazy voters are voting approval style because they don't want 
to sort out their utilities, and the motivated voters are voting 
approval style because that's the right strategy, who's left? It seems 
to me that we might as well have Approval and keep the ballots simple 
rather than use Range.

-- Andrew
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