Mike S. spoke of a fee that would measure intensity of preference. Though I don't believe that such a fee would be appropriate for public elections, or probably any other kind either, someone claimed that preference intensity would be measured not by charging for each vote or point, but by charging, after the election count, for the amount by which a particular voter has affected the election result. This idea was described, it seems to me, in a small paperback entitled _Topics in the Theory of Voting_ Maybe it was _Selected Topics in the Theory of Voting_. I don't remember the details of how he suggested determining how much a particular voter's role was in affecting the election, but it probably had to do with how great the winner's margin of victory was, and how many points you gave him. The smaller his margin was, the greater share of the credit for his election is deserved by each of his votes. The author said that, in order for the price to be genuine, the revenue from those fees must not be spent for the public good. It should be burned or sunk in the ocean or something. He also pointed out that, of course, it would have to be determined (or estimated as well as possible) how much of a fee from a person with one income compares to a certain fee from someone with a different income. There's probably no particular reason to expect the relation to be linear with respect to the two people's income, or even with respect to the fees. No reason why, for 2 people, the ratio should be the same at different levels of subjective price. Obviously that would be a very difficult function to evaluate fairly, and that adds to the reasons why such fees shouldn't really be considered. Mike Ossipoff
