[EM] Has this idea been considered?

[Russ Paielli]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Andrew Myers <andru at cs.cornell.edu> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
You raise an interesting point, Andrew. I vaguely recall discussing this
very point years ago. From a strict mathematical/probabilistic perspective,
you may be correct. But from a psychological perspective, maybe there's more
to it.

The most common complaint about Approval is that the voter is forced to rate
his approved candidates all equally. Range obviously gets around that
objection.

I would consider rating some candidates off the limits. Does that make me a
chump? Maybe. I'd probably rate my "approved" candidates from 8-10 and my
"disapproved" candidates from 0-2, or something like that -- so at least I
would not be a hard-core chump!

--Russ P.

-- 
http://RussP.us
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