I'm not aware of much in the way of serious opposition to the two-party majority vote. in fact any reasonable methodology should reduce to the majority vote when there are two candidates. The only method (to my knowledge) that doesn't do this is range voting. www.rangevoting.org. Range voting reduces to something similar to what you are saying. The problem lies in giving numerical value to something as intangible as "satisfaction." How do I measure my satisfaction relative to yours? Also, regardless of strongly I feel (perhaps I only have a weak preference for one candidate), strategically, I should give the maximum rating to the candidate I like to maximize my happiness. And could this even be called strategic voting, because there is no universal yardstick of happiness? Perhaps my weak preference is comparable to your strong preference.
Ian Fellows Statistician University of California, San Diego http://thefell.googlepages.com p.s. The arguments on rangevoting.org are pretty fast and loose ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info