Most of this discussion, if it relates to public elections, ignores the electors. It takes no account of the real levels of literacy and numeracy. In the UK approximately 25% of adults have a literacy level below that expected for an adult. I do not think the overall situation in the USA will be any better.
I do not think the majority of electors would be happy with negative numbers. Opinion polling organisations tend to use scales graded 1 - 5 or 1 - 10. We do have experience in Scotland of voters ranking candidates in order of preference in STV-PR elections for our 32 local government councils. Details of the numbers of preferences marked, by ward and by ballot box (= Polling Station = part of a Polling District), are available on the 32 websites of the councils. The full ballot data (preference profiles) for all 353 wards will be available early in 2013. James Gilmour > -----Original Message----- > From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com > [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On > Behalf Of Juho Laatu > Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2012 11:23 PM > To: EM list > Subject: Re: [EM] Majority-Judgement using adjectives versus > alphabeticalscales versus numerical ranges. > > > On 6.12.2012, at 23.54, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote: > > > ¡Hello! > > > > ¿How fare you? > > > > Yesterday, I noted that Majority-Judgements does not > work if we have > > too many adjectives because we have only so many adjectives > and voters > > might confuse adjectives too close in meaning.. ¿Would an > > alphabetical scale be acceptable?: > > > > In the United States of America, we grade students > using letters: > > > > A+ > > A > > A- > > B+ > > B > > B- > > C+ > > C > > C- > > D+ > > D > > D- > > F+ > > F > > F- > > > > I have 2 questions grading candidates on this scale. 1 > question is > > for people not in the United States of America. The other > question is > > for everyone: > > > > People outside the United States of America: > > > > ¿Do you Understand this Scale? > > Very understandable. If some values should be considered > unacceptable, then that category should be pointed out. > > > > > For everyone: > > > > ¿Is this scale acceptable to you? > > > > Followup question: > > > > If this scale is not acceptable to you, ¿why is it not > acceptable to > > you? > > > > With 15 grades, this scale is not very different from > the numerical > > ranges of 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9. This raises the > > question: > > > > ¿Why not just use the ranges 0 to 9 or negative -9 to > positive +9 > > instead? > > Each country could use those values (letters or numbers) that > people are most familiar with. If you want to have universal > coverage, then numbers are good since they heve the same > meaning and people are familiar with them everyehere. > > It depends on the type of election if "-n to +n" is better > than "0 to n" or "1 to n". If there is an "approval cutoff" > or "unacceptable values", then the scale can be from "a to b > to c" (b can be 0 or a positive number). Since most number > systems are based on 10, ranges that are in one way or > another based on that number are good. > > I guess low values are usually worse than high values, but > one could also use ranking style values where "1" is the best value. > > Juho > ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2634/5439 - Release Date: 12/05/12 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
