On 6/21/12 6:34 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
Why do I think new terms are worthwhile? I think that choosing the right term is an important part of activism. Neither pro-life nor pro-choice activists are satisfied with the more-descriptive "anti-abortion" or "abortion rights". Similarly, Republicans made no headway against the inheritance tax until they termed it the "death tax". And FairVote has done very well with "instant runoff".
IRV does not have much cred or currency anymore. i think that FairVote will someday regret the exclusive attachment to the term. but i also think it's quite descriptive. it's a good term for the masses. better than "Hare method", "Alternative vote", or "STV". and, in the NW US, (i think Washington state) they used "RCV" for "ranked-choice voting", which is descriptive of the ballot, but not specific enough about the method of tabulation.
Do you really want to advocate a ballot format, instead of a specific method? Or is it a tool to help advocate "Range" (which will be a seemingly redundant name once you've made the effort to separately explain what ratings ballots are).
"Rated ballots" or "Rated voting" is an okay term, i guess, and i don't think that "Range voting" was very meaningful to me when i first read the term from Warren's site. but "Score voting" immediately had meaning. i knew right away what it meant, and when i use the term to talk with non-technical people interested about voting issues (usually after the nasty IRV battle we had here), i always say "Score voting" and compare it to judging at an athletic performance, like Olympic gymnastics. then people know exactly what i mean. to a person, no one liked the idea of rating candidates as their official expression of their vote.
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