[EM] a question about apportionment

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Jameson Quinn wrote:
> How hard it is to vote in each system is an empirical, not a theoretical 
> system. The evidence is pretty clear that it is easier for most people 
> to rate candidates on an absolute scale - whether numeric or verbal - 
> rather than ranking them relative to each other. That is true despite 
> the fact that it is illogical, that in some sense it should be easier to 
> give a ranked vote which contains less information. But the fact 
> remains: people can usually vote faster, with less ballot spoilage, and 
> with less self-reported difficulty, under Range as compared to Condorcet.

I must be odd then, as I find ranking easier than rating. When I rate, I 
feel like I have to be certain I'm rating them all by a common exact 
standard, and that I'm not just being right about the ordering but also 
about "by how much": "Do I rate X at 50% or 55%?". In contrast, for 
ranking, I just have to know: "I would rather live in a nation with X in 
power than with Y in power".

In addition, for Range in particular, if I want to make my vote count, I 
have to vote Approval-style. Picking the right approval cutoff requires 
access to polls as well as some amount of cleverness. Again, I'm not 
completely sure why, but I feel that is something I have to do in Range, 
but ballot optimization in Condorcet (burial, that is), is cheating and 
bad; perhaps because optimizing well in Range doesn't involve the chance 
that a candidate you really didn't want to win will win, whereas that 
can happen with burial.