Yesterday I came across a series of interesting papers on Range voting written by Warren D.Smith. Those interested see the papers under the title "56. Range Voting" on http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html
a.. TITLE: Range Voting b.. abstract; c.. ps file (28 pages); pdf; d.. Attempt to summarize paper in 1 picture (ps file)! e.. C program for monte carlo voting study; f.. data output by that program; g.. possible press release about this work; h.. questions and answers about range voting; i.. Why range voting is superior to IRV voting; j.. Why range voting is better than Borda voting; k.. Why range voting is better than Approval voting; l.. Possible language for a ballot proposition to adopt range voting & outlaw gerrymandering; m.. Possible strategy to get the USA to adopt range voting; n.. opinion piece about voting; o.. Smith's replies to www criticisms of range voting (multipage); p.. AUTHOR: Warren D.Smith q.. DATE: 11/28/00 Best wishes for 2005, Jurij Toplak > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ > > Ralph Suter wrote: > > Will someone on the list who has studied range voting and compared it to > Condorcet, approval, and other methods please comment on Doug Greene's > paper? He > appears to be saying that range voting is superior to all other single > winner > methods. Are there good arguments against this conclusion? Does range voting > have serious flaws? If so, could someone briefly summarize them? > > Thanks, > Ralph Suter > > > It has no serious flaws. > > Range Voting is also called Cardinal Ratings (CR). It's strategically > equivalent to Approval, and that makes CR one of the best methods. > > Personally I prefer Condorcet to Approval and CR, but, among practical > proposals, Approval & CR are a close 2nd. I prefer Condorcet because I like > the luxury of sincerely voting as many pairwise preferences as I want to, as > many preference levels as I want to. > > Approval & CR will quickly home in on the voter median, and then stay there. > Maybe Approval or CR will arrive there after one or two elections. Condorcet > will go there immediately. > > Let me say what I mean by CR. It's probably the same thing that Range Voting > means: > > Cardinal Ratings (CR): > > Each voter may give to any candidate any number of points, within some > pre-specified range. The winner is the candidate who receives the most > points. > > [end of CR definition] > > Approval, of course is a CR version, the simplest one. The 0,1 CR version. > > Other CR versions include 0-10 CR, 0-100, -10 to 10, -100 to 100, and > -1,0,1. > > I say that they're all equivalent to Approval because one's best strategy to > maximize expectation is to give maximum points to the candidates for whom > one would vote if it were an Approval election, and give minimum points to > the others. > > Approval is my favorite, because of that equivalency, and because of > Approval's elegant simplicity. > > But Approval may be the most difficult CR version to propose, because most > people haven't heard of it, and sometimes give a fallacious "1 person 1 > vote" objection to Approval. This isn't the place to answer that, so I'll > just say that that objection is easily answered, in a number of ways. But it > would be better to avoid the objection. > > One way to avoid it would be to, from the start, offer Approval as a point > system, one in which we can give to any candidate 0 points or 1 point. The > simplest point system. Then people wouldn't misperceive Approval as illegal > Plurality voting. > > Another way to avoid that objecion, and Approval's unfamiliarity would be to > propose one of the other CR versions. They're much more familiar. Everyone's > been asked to rate things from 1 to 10, and so 0-10 isn't unfamiliar, for > instance. > > And the CR versions allowing negative ratings, though they're essentially > the same as the other versions, have the great advantage that many people > would very much like to give negative points. > > For that reason, the negative points CR versions may be the most winnable of > all. Of those, -1,0,1 is the simplest and most easily implemented. Because > of initiatives that let us vote yes or no on a list of initiatives, we can > implement -1,0,1 easily with existing equipment & software. > > Of course the ballot needn't (but still could) offer all 3 point options > (-1, 0 and 1). It could just offer -1 or 1; or Yes or No. Not voting either > would assign 0 points. > > CR, then, may be the most winnable of all the good voting systems, due to > its familiarity and simplicilty. And the negative points versions might be > the most winnable of those. And the easily-implemented -1,0,1 is probably my > favorite public proposal among those. > > With all the CR versions, as with Approval, no one ever has any incentive to > vote someone over their favorite. That can't strictly be said for any other > method. Of course IRV violates that criterion often. Condorcet much less so. > Condorcete's violations of that criterion (Favorite-Betrayal Criterion, or > FBC) > are rare, contrived, and unimportant. > > Approval & the other CR versions meet WDSC: > > Weak Defensive Strategy Criterion (WDSC): > > If a majority of all the voters prefer X to Y, then they should have a way > of voting that ensures that Y won't win, without any member of that majority > voting a less-liked candidate over a more-liked one. > > [end of WDSC definition] > > That criterion is also met by the better Condorcet versions, the > "winning-votes" Condorcet versions. They meet other, stronger, similar > criteria too. > Those critreria can be found at: > > http://www.electionmethods.org at the technical evaluation page, and at: > > http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html > > Mike Ossipoff > > _________________________________________________________________ > Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! 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