[EM] Range Voting for State Representative election of US Senators.

[David L Wetzell]

I argued that if we hypothetically elected our state reps with a large
number of 3-seat LR Hare elections so that there'd be at least one state
rep from each of the two biggest parties in a state and the third would
either be from the bigger major party or the biggest third party that this
could make it advantageous to go back to the US Constitution mandated
election of US senators by state legislatures.

If we did this then it might be an ideal opportunity to employ range voting.
Let's say that there were 5 candidates (the incumbent + 4 others most
nominated by state reps) and each state rep got to give them any integer
from 0 to 10.

Then, it could be mandated that they make public their rationale for the
scores given on five consistent criteria for the five candidates.  Each
criteria would get either 0, 1 or 2 points.  They'd have to give their
scores on 5 criteria, which they'd get to select, for all of the candidates
plus a short explanation that would then be published for their
constituents.

This would mitigate strategic voting problems with range voting and force
the proxy elections of US senators to be more issue-oriented.  And, the
proxy-voting would save a lot of money so much that we'd be able to do it
every 2 years, instead of every 6 years....  I think the use of a
single-winner rule for the election of Senators, as opposed to a
multi-winner rule for the election of Congress-persons would fit with the
founders' idea, as influenced by Montesquieu, behind having a bicameral
legislature, with the different branches elected in different ways.

Once again, you can say it ain't ever going to happen, but that's not true
on procedural grounds, like with the issues with the use of the Condorcet
method in the face of a relatively high percent of voter-errors, especially
when coupled with the absence of a Condorcet Winner....

dlw
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