[EM] regarding ratings ballots

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,

You wrote to Robert:

Le dimanche 24 octobre 2021, 19:35:47 UTC−5, fdpk69p6uq at snkmail.com <fdpk69p6uq at snkmail.com> a écrit :
> Also, I'm surprised and a bit saddened that you haven't come around to cardinal systems 
> yet.  :/ 
> 
> The goal of democracy is to elect the candidate who best represents the will of the voters.

It sounds reasonable. There is probably less dispute about the goal of methods, than the
technique to achieve it.

> My near-indifference between two candidates shouldn't arbitrarily be given the same weight
> as your strong preference between them.

Personally I have no objection to ratings ballots, I just don't often see what we can do
with them that will achieve something additional. Something like JGA'S Cardinal-Weighted
Pairwise or Approval-Weighted Pairwise are fine by me, giving voters a way to allocate
preference strength as they see necessary.

I tend to assume elections are hard-fought with probably few strong frontrunners. In that
environment I'm not sure what combination of method and scenario would both highlight the
concern that you raise and also suggest a solution.

Kevin