[EM] Majority-Judgement using adjectives versus alphabeticalscales versus numerical ranges.

[James Gilmour]

Most of this discussion, if it relates to public elections, ignores the electors.  It takes no account of the real levels of literacy and numeracy.  In the UK approximately 25% of adults have a literacy level below that expected for an adult.  I do not think the overall situation in the USA will be any better.

I do not think the majority of electors would be happy with negative numbers.  Opinion polling organisations tend to use scales graded 1 - 5 or 1 - 10.

We do have experience in Scotland of voters ranking candidates in order of preference in STV-PR elections for our 32 local government councils.  Details of the numbers of preferences marked, by ward and by ballot box (= Polling Station = part of a Polling District), are available on the 32 websites of the councils.  The full ballot data (preference profiles) for all 353 wards will be available early in 2013.

James Gilmour


> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com 
> [mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On 
> Behalf Of Juho Laatu
> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2012 11:23 PM
> To: EM list
> Subject: Re: [EM] Majority-Judgement using adjectives versus 
> alphabeticalscales versus numerical ranges.
> 
> 
> On 6.12.2012, at 23.54, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote:
> 
> > 	¡Hello!
> > 
> > 	¿How fare you?
> > 
> > 	Yesterday, I noted that Majority-Judgements does not 
> work if we have 
> > too many adjectives because we have only so many adjectives 
> and voters 
> > might confuse adjectives too close in meaning..  ¿Would an 
> > alphabetical scale be acceptable?:
> > 
> > 	In the United States of America, we grade students 
> using letters:
> > 
> > 	A+
> > 	A
> > 	A-
> > 	B+
> > 	B
> > 	B-
> > 	C+
> > 	C
> > 	C-
> > 	D+
> > 	D
> > 	D-
> > 	F+
> > 	F
> > 	F-
> > 
> > 	I have 2 questions grading candidates on this scale.  1 
> question is 
> > for people not in the United States of America.  The other 
> question is 
> > for everyone:
> > 
> > 	People outside the United States of America:
> > 
> > 	¿Do you Understand this Scale?
> 
> Very understandable. If some values should be considered 
> unacceptable, then that category should be pointed out.
> 
> > 
> > 	For everyone:
> > 
> > 	¿Is this scale acceptable to you?
> > 
> > 	Followup question:
> > 
> > 	If this scale is not acceptable to you, ¿why is it not 
> acceptable to 
> > you?
> > 
> > 	With 15 grades, this scale is not very different from 
> the numerical 
> > ranges of 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9.  This raises the 
> > question:
> > 
> > 	¿Why not just use the ranges 0 to 9 or negative -9 to 
> positive +9 
> > instead?
> 
> Each country could use those values (letters or numbers) that 
> people are most familiar with. If you want to have universal 
> coverage, then numbers are good since they heve the same 
> meaning and people are familiar with them everyehere.
> 
> It depends on the type of election if "-n to +n" is better 
> than "0 to n" or "1 to n". If there is an "approval cutoff" 
> or "unacceptable values", then the scale can be from "a to b 
> to c" (b can be 0 or a positive number). Since most number 
> systems are based on 10, ranges that are in one way or 
> another based on that number are good.
> 
> I guess low values are usually worse than high values, but 
> one could also use ranking style values where "1" is the best value.
> 
> Juho
> 



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