<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>I can see the point about strategic range just being approval, but strategic First-Past-The-Post is just ignoring everyone except the top two candidates, and you wouldn't just cut out all other candidates in an election to make it simpler. (I think I nicked that point from Warren Smith). If range voting does still produce some honest voters then it might still give a better winner than approval. I suppose the main worry is that under First-Past-The-Post, people know that if they are voting for someone who's unlikely to win then they are "wasting" their vote, whereas under range voting, the best strategy isn't necessarily as obvious so people lose voting power by not understanding the ins and outs of tactical voting. To me, that's probably the biggest point against range voting. Having
said that, if it's as simple as always give 0 or 10 (if it's out of 10), then I imagine it should catch on pretty quickly, although who to give the 0s and 10s to might not always be as obvious.</DIV>
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<DIV>But anyway, I would use range voting for multi-winner elections. For me the biggest problem is not which particular system we use to elect a single winner, but that there is a single winner that takes everything. When we had the referendum for Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off) in the UK, I think most people that preferred it to First-Past-The-Post agreed that it was just scratching the surface and that although it seemed nicer in principle it wouldn't really make much of a material difference (and generally for single-winner systems). And I think most people who voted for Alternative Vote really wanted a proportional system. Anyway, the point I was going to make is that I wonder what strategies people would adopt under a proportional range system - would it always be 0 or 10?<BR></DIV>
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<B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Andrew Myers <andru@cs.cornell.edu><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> election-methods@lists.electorama.com<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Fri, 8 July, 2011 19:41:27<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?<BR></FONT><BR>To me, Range remains a non-starter for political settings, though I can see some valid uses.<BR><BR>I have implicitly argued that the real barrier to adoption of other voting method is simply the complexity of constructing one's ballot. Range voting is more complex than producing an ordering on candidates. For me the problem of determining my own utility for various candidates is quite perplexing; I can't imagine the "ordinary voter" finding it more pleasant.<BR><BR>Range also exposes the possibility of strategic voting very explicitly to the voters. Only a chump casts a vote
other than 0 or 10 on a 10-point scale. Range creates an incentive for dishonesty.<BR><BR>So if the lazy voters are voting approval style because they don't want to sort out their utilities, and the motivated voters are voting approval style because that's the right strategy, who's left? It seems to me that we might as well have Approval and keep the ballots simple rather than use Range.<BR><BR>-- Andrew<BR></DIV></DIV></div></body></html>