The following endorsement from Mike Ossipoff will be added to the Endorsements page of the Center for Range Voting site, http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/RangeVoting.html . - Jan
[beginning of addition to endorsement message] For me, the greatest advantage of RV, in all its versions, including Approval, is that the voter never has any incentive or need to vote someone over his/her favorite. That sounds like an obvious criterion, but very few methods comply with it. Many of us on the election-methods list consider it so important that we have a name for it: The Favorite-Betrayal Criterion (FBC). Though I always considered FBC to be important, recent conversations with voters have convinced me that FBC compliance is absolutely necessary, at least at this time in history. Even intelligent progressives will vote someone over their favorite in Condorcet, or any method that doesn't transparently guarantee that they have no reason to do so. To tell the truth, I'd do so myself when it would increase the probability that an acceptable candidate would win instead of an unacceptable one. I used to say that RV (including Approval) is the only method that meets FBC. But it's recently been pointed out, by Kevin Venzke and Forest Simmons, on the election-methods mailing list, that there are a few rank methods that meet FBC. Those rank methods also offer additional criterion-compliances that can only be gotten by rank-balloting. But, when praising those newly-discovered FBC-complying rank methods, I pointed out that : 1) Their compliance with FBC isn't as transparently obvious as that of Range Voting. 2) Those rank methods are new methods, rank methods among a galaxy of rank methods. There are innumerable ways to count rank ballots. There's one way to count range ballots: Add them up. People won't ask why we count it as we do. 3) Range Voting is familiar and popular and therefore probably much more winnable than any rank method. In addition to FBC, RV has more advantages. As has been pointed out elsewhere at this website, RV, at least when the range is sufficiently large, say at least 0 to 10, maximizes social utility and minimizes Bayesian regret, if voting is sincere. And all RV versions, including Approval, when voting is strategic, guarantee that, with a few plausible assumptions RV will maximize the number of voters for whom the utility of the winner is greater than their pre-election expectation for the election. In other words, with strategic voting, RV maximizes the number of voters who are pleasantly surprised by the outcome. That's a lot of advantages for one method. [end of addition to endorsement message] Mike ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info