RangeVoting.org - Center for Range Voting - front page

Time 2020-12-08 07:03:44

Web Name: RangeVoting.org - Center for Range Voting - front page

WebSite: http://rangevoting.org

ID:127296

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Center,for,RangeVoting,

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Force voters to say the least possible amount name just one candidate, and say nothing about how much you likeor dislike any of the others.Make it reward voters for not voting for whom they really want.Make it operate, over time, in such a way as to diminish your number ofchoices to the minimum only 2 (or 1, meaning no choice at all).Make it easy for fraudsters to invalidate ballots ("overvoting").But wait!That's our voting system now!There's a better way: score voting(also known as "range voting").You've all seen score voting in action as theOlympicscoring system.Judges give the competitors scores and the highest average score wins.Similarly, in a score voting election, voters would give the candidates scores,and the one with the highest average would win.Score voting permits voters to express their opinions about any number ofcandidates (not just one).It eliminates the spoiler, "wasted vote," and candidate cloning problems.All candidates compete on a level playing field, whetherDemocrat, Republican, Independent, or other.It's simple enough to run on all of today's voting machines andto be used by kindergarteners.Each vote consists of a numerical score within some range (say0 to 99)for each candidate.Simpler is 0 to 9 ("single digit score voting").Voters may also indicate "X" "NO OPINION" if they have no opinionabout a candidate.Such votes don't affect that candidate's average. Andrews NO OPINION Benson NO OPINION Carey NO OPINION Davis NO OPINION Elbert NO OPINION example,"Andrews=9, Benson=0, Carey=3, Davis=9, Elbert=X" could be your votein a Score voting election, where 9 indicates best and X indicates "NO OPINION."The candidate with the highest averagescore wins... exceptIf desired, the candidates can pre-agree that each is to be awarded T fake votesusing score S (for some pre-agreed values of S and T) before the election begins.The highest average based on both the real and fake votes, wins.This is fair since S and T are the same for every candidate.(Why do that?)To educate the public about the advantages of score votingand comparative disadvantages of other systems(especially the USA's embarrassingly poor current "plurality" system),To assist anyone looking to use Score Voting for an election, whether for public office, student elections, or anything else.CURRENT VOTING MACHINES CAN HANDLE RANGE VOTING:That can't be said of IRVCondorcet.THE "BEATS-ALL" CANDIDATE WINS: A beats-all candidate is one who would beat every other candidate inone-on-one races.Counterintuitively, in many voting systems "beats all" candidates do not necessarily prevail.(Indeed, a "lose to all" candidate can easily win underour current system.)But in range voting (under certain assumptions aboutstrategic voter behavior)the beats-all candidate always wins.MAXIMIZES PLEASANT SURPRISE: A voter is "pleasantly surprised" when the election winner is betterthan she expected. It is a theorem that range voting (under certain assumptions aboutstrategic voter behavior) maximizes the number of pleasantly surprised voters.FEWER "SPOILED BALLOTS"and LESS FRAUD:pluralityvoting, an accidental hanging chad or overvote can cause your vote to be discarded. With range voting, it causes only part of your vote to get discarded(converted to "no opinion") with the rest your opinions of all the other candidates still operational. There's no such thing as an "overvote" since expressing opinionsabout all candidates is the idea; there's no wrong way to fill in a ballot.Score voting also reduces risk of TIES.USING OBJECTIVE CRITERIA, RANGE VOTING IS BEST:For the mathematicians...Range voting has the lowest BAYESIAN REGRETamong all common single-winner election methods.(Found from massive computer simulationsfor all 720 tried combinations of the following:number V of voters and N of candidates with V>N>2, several kinds of "utility generators",several amounts of "voter ignorance," and with either "honest" or "strategic" voters.)HUGE POSITIVE IMPACT: Democracy improved over monarchy and feudalism.We can expressthat improvement as a number by using theBayesian regretyardstick and assuming, e.g, that those nondemocratic systemswere at least as good as "random winner."Measurements on this same yardstick suggestthat switching from plurality to rangewill cause at least as much further regret reduction.When you consider INDIRECT EFFECTS invisible to Bayesian Regret ("direct" effects happen in one election,indirect ones over a sequence of many elections) that usually increases Score Voting's edge over competing methods. (Examples: 2-party domination and nursery effect. )UNBIASED:Plurality and IRV both have natural pro-extremist biases,while approval has pro-centrist bias.But score-voting has little or no discernible such bias.NATURE USES RANGE VOTING:Honeybees antshave run trillions of elections over the last 20-50 million yearsto make hive relocation decisions. Under severe evolutionary pressure, they cameup with... range voting! (Cf. Bonobos.)VOTERS WANT IT!Referenda and poll studies show that voters want score votingand would enact it by landslide ( 60%). However they do not want various othersystems including IRV.

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