Someone (Kevin or Bart or both) recently reminded us that the usual version of Cumulative Voting is strategically equivalent to Plurality.
However the recent proposal allowing both positive and negative votes with the sum of absolute values limited, is different: it turns out to be strategically equivalent to a method that (like plurality) allows only one mark, but that mark can be either positive or negative, i.e. you can vote for a candidate or against a candidate, but not both. That would definitely be an improvement over plurality, and in the case of three candidates it would be equivalent to Approval. But with four or more candidates, Approval would be better for the usual reasons. Forest ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
