[EM] Nontechnical words for cardinal and ordinal categories?

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 6/21/12 6:34 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>> Why do I think new terms are worthwhile? I think that choosing the right term is an important part of activism. Neither pro-life nor pro-choice activists are satisfied with the more-descriptive "anti-abortion" or "abortion rights". Similarly, Republicans made no headway against the inheritance tax until they termed it the "death tax". And FairVote has done very well with "instant runoff".

IRV does not have much cred or currency anymore.  i think that FairVote 
will someday regret the exclusive attachment to the term.  but i also 
think it's quite descriptive.  it's a good term for the masses.  better 
than "Hare method", "Alternative vote", or "STV".  and, in the NW US, (i 
think Washington state) they used "RCV" for "ranked-choice voting", 
which is descriptive of the ballot, but not specific enough about the 
method of tabulation.

> Do you really want to advocate a ballot format, instead of a specific method? Or
> is it a tool to help advocate "Range" (which will be a seemingly redundant name
> once you've made the effort to separately explain what ratings ballots are).

"Rated ballots" or "Rated voting" is an okay term, i guess, and i don't 
think that "Range voting" was very meaningful to me when i first read 
the term from Warren's site.  but "Score voting" immediately had 
meaning.  i knew right away what it meant, and when i use the term to 
talk with non-technical people interested about voting issues (usually 
after the nasty IRV battle we had here), i always say "Score voting" and 
compare it to judging at an athletic performance, like Olympic 
gymnastics.  then people know exactly what i mean.  to a person, no one 
liked the idea of rating candidates as their official expression of 
their vote.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."