Range Voting Straw Poll
While we’re on the subject, I’ve been meaning for weeks to post about this, and have been receiving now almost daily death threats from Clay to do so. I wanted to include some kind of widget to feature it on the site (without having it as a giant graphic), but haven’t found any good way to do so. Laura at RedStateEclectic has it up on her site, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. In any event, I’ll at least post about it.
I’ve written about range voting before, of course (here, and here). Essentially, it’s a method of voting that far surpasses plurality voting (what we have now) and psuedo-alternative Instant Runoff, as the optimal method of voting, allowing people to provide the most information and minimizing all kinds of problems that our current voting system has in spades. Clay (weltershmetz or whatever here) has converted me to the cause. From their eye-opening site http://rangevoting.org/:
If you were trying to design the worst way to vote, you might:
* Force voters to say the least possible amount – name just one candidate, and say nothing about how much you like or dislike any of the others.
* Make it reward voters for not voting for whom they really want.
* Make it operate, over time, in such a way as to diminish your number of choices to the minimum – only 2 (or 1, meaning no choice at all).
* Make there be an easy way to invalidate ballots (“overvoting”) – just to make life easy for fraudsters.But wait, that’s our voting system now!
There’s a better way: range voting.
Range voting essentially asks you to rate each candidate, on a scale of 1 to 5 (or whatever). After a few other mathematical checks and balances, the candidate with the highest average (i.e. the person that people like the most), wins.
Anyway, Clay has done up a straw poll for all the major party presidential candidates to give an idea of how it works, and posted it. It’s an interesting exercise, and worth checking out (and voting in!)
And though the sample may be biased, after nearly 2000 votes, Ron Paul is winning. But check out the averages for each candidate.
Check out the poll, and if you have some time, check out the site, http://rangevoting.org/, which is illustrative, enlightening, easy to follow, and comprehensive. Worth your time. And though it may seem niche, in any way that counts, it’s the most important single issue out there.
If only the parties used Range Voting for their straw polls (e.g. Iowa and Illinois), they would be so much more representative of the candidates’ real level of support, because we currently have the problem of “vote splitting” (also called clone dependence).
Comment by weltschmerz — 8/17/2007 @ 11:38 am
>Essentially, it’s a method of voting that
>far surpasses… *snip* … as the optimal
>method of voting
I’d be careful with calling it THE optimal method of voting. Range voting is pretty good, but rangevoting.org founder Warren Smith’s own simulations show that range voting followed by a runoff between the top-2 candidates is better.
There are enough concerns about what should be optimized for an election process and about what should be assumed about the process (eg, Are their primaries? Are runoffs allowed?) that no one method dominates all criteria.
That said, I consider range voting to be a very good election method whose use I would support. I prefer it at it’s lowest granularity as “approval voting”.
Comment by AllAboutVoting — 8/19/2007 @ 6:23 pm
Point taken. I suppose when talking about this kind of thing “optimal” isn’t the right word to use. Although, in terms of SYSTEMS of voting, I think saying range voting is the best option we’ve got is correct (that is to say, what method you actually vote with; how you engineer an election is slightly different, though obviously includes what voting method you use).
Comment by Brad — 8/19/2007 @ 9:03 pm
rangevoting.org founder Warren Smith’s own simulations show that range voting followed by a runoff between the top-2 candidates is better.
No they do not! I don’t know why you and Abd ul-Rahman Lomax keep saying this. His simulations show that a top-two runoff can mitigate the effects of a highly strategic electorate. With a more honest electorate that doesn’t polarize their scores so much, Range Voting does better. The issue is, how strategic will people be in real life? And is the mild benefit of holding a runoff (if it is a benefit at all, which we don’t know that it is) greater than the detriment of the cost of holding it? I don’t think so. I think that the net social utility is greater without the runoff.
There are enough concerns about what should be optimized for an election process and about what should be assumed about the process (eg, Are their primaries? Are runoffs allowed?) that no one method dominates all criteria.
That’s like saying that because aerodynamics, and mass, and engine power affect a race car’s speed, no one car dominates. Baloney. Put them all on the track for 1000 trials, and see which car gets the best average time. The analog with voting methods is social utility efficiency. It may be hard to calculate the negative utility (cost) of holding primaries and runoffs – but at the end of the day, there is a method that has the highest social utility efficiency in typical real world conditions, end of story.
Range Voting appears to be the best if taking all these things into account, because the benefit of holding a runoff is so minor.
You are also wrong to support Approval Voting over Range Voting, because the mild simplicity benefit cannot possibly outweight the 5-10% social utility efficiency benefit of finer granularity Range Voting. So you are simply being a bad economist here.
Comment by weltschmerz — 8/20/2007 @ 6:56 pm