[EM] Fwd: [CES #15768] "Voting method" vs. "voting system"

[Jameson Quinn]

I started a discussion on the electionscience at googlegroups.com list about
terminology — what should we call the set of things that includes approval,
plurality, borda, etc.? I'd like to take a more systematic look.

Options: voting system; voting method; election system; election method;
electoral system; electoral method

voting system:
wikipedia article
55K hits in Google Scholar; of top 20, 3 are using it for the thing I want
(TIW)
3.3M hits in Google; of top 20, 9 are TIW, of which 3 are WP.
Otherwise, mostly used for stuff like "electronic voting method"

voting method:
13K hits GS. Top 20, 1 is TIW.
196K hits Google. Top 20, 16 are TIW.
Academically, seems to refer to algorithms for other purposes which involve
simulated "voting" by various sub-algorithms.

election method:
2.9K hits GS. Top 20, 6 are TIW.
46K hits G. Top 20, 16 are TIW, of which 7 are WP.

election system:
20K hits GS. Top 20, 2 are TIW
460K hits G. Top 20, 2 are TIW

electoral system:
Endorsed by WP in first sentence of article.
145k hits GS. Top 20, ~13 are approx TIW, but with a tendency to combine
TIW with country-specific factors.
2.6M hits G. Top 20, ~15 are TIW, but with same caveat.

electoral method:
946 hits GS. Top 20, 16 are TIW
12K hits G. Top 20, 18 are TIW

By google trends (search frequency), the order is "voting" > "electoral" >
"election", and "system" >>> "method".

So "electoral method" is the most specific, but the rarest. "Electoral
system" is the winner in academic literature, but even there is not exactly
what we mean. "Voting method" is reasonably good in google, but is crappy
from an academic point of view.

This is not exactly clear-cut, but I think that of these, "voting method"
is what we should be using. The competing academic meaning is obviously
distinct and not confusable, unlike with the tough calls of "electoral
system". The search frequency of "voting" is higher than any of the other
modifier terms. And the system/method distinction makes sense to me, while
I am not clear on how I would explain a "voting/election/electoral"
distinction.



2017-02-10 10:53 GMT-05:00 Warren D Smith <warren.wds at gmail.com>:

> "election method".
>
>
> --
> Warren D. Smith
> http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
> "endorse" as 1st step)
>
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