Mike Ossipoff sent the following statement to me with the intention that it be posted in the Endorsements section of the recently created Center for Range Voting (CRV) web site.
The current location of the CRV web site is http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/RangeVoting.html. If you would like to get active and promote Range Voting for use in public elections, please visit the CRV web site and join the associated newsgroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rangevoting. Cheers, - Jan Kok ===== Endorsement of Range Voting from Mike Ossipoff ===== I was a participant in the election-methods mailing list since its inception. I was one of its founding members. In fact, it was I who suggested forming the "Single-Winner Committee" that evolved into the elecion-methods (EM) mailing list, which now has international membership. My voting system articles can be found at the URL: http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/vote/sing.html I've made many suggestions and proposals about voting systems and criteria for evaluating them. Some people like my criteria and agree with my voting system proposals, and some don't, but I'm well-known in Internet voting system circles. Having worked with, discussed, and debated voting systems since 1983, I've now retired from the subject. When I retire from a subject, the retirement is complete, but I wanted to make one exception, and post to this endorsement page of the Range Voting website. In recent years I've often said that Range Voting shares Approval's merits, while probably being a much more winnable public proposal, due to Range-Voting's great public familiarity. Wwho hasn't been asked to rate something from 1 to 10? Of course RV more typically would use 0 to 10, -10 to 10, etc. Some Olympic events are judged by Range Voting, with ratings from 0 to 10. I've often argued that Range Voting is probably the most promising place to apply voting system reform effort, because of its great familiarity, and because, merit-wise, it's one of the best proposals. Range Voting is sometimes referred to as Cardinal Ratings (CR), or "The point system". Approval is a simple version of RV. I've often suggested that if someone wants to propose Appoval, they should first introduce RV, and then introduce Approval as a type of RV. But the more wide-range RV versions seem more winnable. Before quitting here, I should mention that I suspect that people would enjoy the idea of being able to give negative point assignments, and so the RV versions such as -10 to 10 might be especially popular. I should add that all of the RV versions are strategically equivalent to eachother. It makes no practical difference which is enacted. Choice among them should be based entirely on what seems more winnable with the public. Of course polling should guide that judgement, but my bet is on the methods with wider ranges than Approval, especially the ones allowing negative point assignments. One last thing. A simple, but potentially likeable RV version would be the -1,0,1 version. If no mark indicates a 0 rating, then -1,0,1 could be implemented with the same ballots and count machinery used in our initiative voting, in which we can vote yes or no on a list of initiatives. Well, this posting, the one exception to my retirement, is my last voting system discussion. Let's hope that RV succeeds. It's great that there's an RV website and advocacy organization now. I wish that the Approval organizations would include general RV as a proposal, since Approval is an RV version. The RV effort and the Approval effort are really one effort, and those two movements should combine their strength and resources as a single organization. At the very least the RV and Approval websites should exchange links. Mike Ossipoff ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info