Abd ul-Rahman Wrote: >The Range vote is a red herring, the same objection would be made if this were an Approval election with votes of 1/1/0 for ABC from Clay and 1/0/0 for >Don. Don would then complain that he did not get to cast a vote for C. But he did have the opportunity to cast that vote:
>initially, and he chose not to cast it. You just took away my right to vote. You say I could have voted for C by voting for (A>C>B) 1/1/0 (But if I did that I can't vote for A over B). With my vote of (A>C>B) of 10/1/0 I am saying that I do have preference for C over B. With Approval voting you are not allowing me to vote for a candidates that I like better than another. You also took away Clay's right to vote. Clay can vote (A>B>C) 1/1/0 for A over C and B over C but you are saying (with approval) that he can not vote for A over B. He also indicated a preference of A over B with (10/9/0). (assuming 4 candidates(A/B/C/D)) Now Plurality voting is limited to the following: (1/0/0/0) or (0/1/0/0) or --- to (0/0/0/1) Approval voting is limited to the following: (0/0/0/0) or (1/0/0/0) or (1/1/0/0) or --- (1/1/1/1) This is clearly better than Plurality voting. You have a lot more chances to express you opinions Preference voting is limited to the following: Voting for A>B (1/0) or (0/1), and for A>C (1/0) or (0/1) and ---- etc. In Pure Preference voting you have a ranking of (A/B/C/D) states only that you prefer A>B and A>D and they are treated the same. This method clearly provides more options for the votes than Approval voting. You may "Approve" of A and B but you still can have a preference of A over B It also encompasses Approval voting if A=B (1/1) voting is allowed A problem with Preference voting is that it does not always come up with a clear winner. Range voting is limited to the following: (10/x/y/z) for A/B/C/D or any other combination (were x/y/z =< 10 and >= 0) This method allows the voter to "Quantify" his or her Preferences. A>B (10/9),--, or 10/0) There are different forms of range voting, you could used 10 but you could use 100 or 3 (3/2/1/0) Range voting provides the maximum (or closes to it) flexibility (options) for the voter. Range voting however does add a lot more complexities to the voting process, this makes it more difficult to see the impact of ones vote. And there may be the Problem of adding individual quantified preferences. A question voters need to ask is "how much added complexities do they want". Plurality has been with us for a couple of hundred years. If you ask voters to change to any of the other methods above most would say "No way- all I want to do is Vote" Don Hoffard
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