> Even worse, it does so in a way that does not make it clear that
> they may be compromising their own interests by "downweighting" their vote.
Depends. When we actually come to Range implementations, this would
be something to pay attention to. It's really a question of ballot
design. But it is far from clear that a Range voter is "compromising
their interests" by voting an intermediate vote for a candidate about
whom they do not care strongly.
Remember, under the present system, they don't have any choice at all....
Sure, but the choice you offer them would be seen as silly if you offered it in a way consistant with how it is tabulated. If you said:
Do you want this candidate to win? (yes or no)
How much much do you want this to count? (Enter a number between 0 and 10, 0 for minimum, 10 for maximum)
....most people would surely see that as absurd, but at least you wouldn't be deceiving them into doing something counter to their interests.
Or, if it was tabulated smartly, where the points you give it were interpreted as your preferences, and then were used to vote with optimum strategy toward that end, it would be just wonderful. But for some reason, which I fail to see, you don't want to do that.
>Voting anything other than 1 or 10 (or whatever the range is) is
>downweighting.
That is, one's vote will not have the maximum effect on the average.
But, in fact, one's vote is strengthening the possibility that the
candidate will have just that score in the outcome. Give the
candidates the scores you want them to receive!
Voting is not about giving scores. It is about electing candidates. Why would anyone care what the score is if it isn't to elect a candidate?
Also, if a voter knows (through polls, for instance) that a candidate is likely to have a score of less than 50, and he, for some reason, wants that candidate to have a score of 50, his best strategy would be to give the candidate a 100, which will move it closer to 50 than giving him a 50. "Give the candidates the scores you want them to receive" is simply bad strategy when you are using averages. If you are voting on numbers, for chrissake use median not average ( see http://karmatics.com/voting/moose-example.html if you don't understand this ). Still, using the median isn't going to solve the main problem here, given that they are electing candidates rather than just picking numbers.
However, yes, in an "I want my way" environment, one may wish to vote
extremes. But there is a cost to this, which is that the ballot
becomes an inaccurate _expression_ of the voter's views, and that can
have undesired consequences.
Totally agree that it is bad to have the ballot be an inaccurate _expression_. But as long as you continue to insist upon a method where "accurate _expression_ of views" is diametrically opposed to "optimum strategy", you can expect that.
I put forward the DSV concept as a solution to this (I didn't know it had already been invented, but it doesn't surprise me that it had). It addresses all this, by letting them express their accurate views, without being strategically disadvantaged for doing so. Why in the world wouldn't you want something along those lines if it is possible?
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