[EM] Nontechnical words for cardinal and ordinal categories?

[Jameson Quinn]

There's been a recent discussion on the mailing list for the Election
Science Foundation (the organization which promotes range and approval
voting) about what to call the category of cardinal voting systems.
"Cardinal" itself is too technical, and doesn't suggest any real meaning to
a nonmathematician. Various options were considered, but the options with
the most support are "graded voting", "grade voting", or "evaluative
voting". These would contrast with "ranked voting", "rank voting", or
"comparative voting" for ordinal systems.

Personally, I favor "Evaluative" / "Comparative". "grade" and "rank" both
have many different possible meanings (some of which are confusingly
synonymous, or discouragingly negative-valence), and "grade" is also used
differently between the US and UK. "Evaluative" and "comparative" are
immediately understandable, as the refer to how you have to think in order
to vote, not just the marks you make on the paper. They translate well to
Spanish, French, or other Romance languages. They are generally
positive-valence words. On the down side, they have a lot of syllables; but
on the whole, I think they're the best words.

But of course terminology only works if it's shared. So what do other
people here think about this?

Jameson
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