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Memphis to memphis = 0
nashvile to memphis = 312.5
chatanooga to memphis = 431.5
Knoxville to memphis = 555.3
memphis score = 324.825
Nashiville to Nashville = 0
Memphis to Nashville = 312.5
Chattanoga to Nashville = 185.4
Knoxville to Nashville = 256.6
Nashville score = 188.625
Chattanooga to Chattanooga = 0
Memphis to Chattanooga = 431.5
Nashivile to Chattanooga = 185.4
Knoxville to Chattanooga = 154.9
Chatanooga score = 190.7
Knoxville to knoxville = 0
Memphis to Knoxville = 555.3
Nashvile to Knoxville = 256.6
Chattagoona to Knoxville = 154.9
Knoxville score = 214.7
The score, is the average the distance between cities and nashiville wins with smallest distance. 201.78.176.52 ( talk) 12:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
multiple-candidate elections. Any possibility that a favorable result will occur due to inaccurate rankings is overwhelmed by the possibility that a non-favorable result will be more likely to occur.
I'm pretty sure that it's been proven that correct range voting strategy is to vote it as approval, at least when the counting method is total score.
If each city votes honestly on a scale of 1-10 with their favorite candidate at 10 and their least favorite at 0 and the remaining candidates proportional to their relative distance, the results are:
I plan on editing the results of the example to fit these more accurate figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monkthatgotfunk ( talk • contribs) 21:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this right, I mean, on approval voting, just because you hated him this doenst mean you dont approve him, on a ballot with 100 candidates some people will not look at every single candidate and vote (or not) accordingly to their preferences.
I removed the following text, because it doesn't make any sense. Obviously candidate will do everything in their power to win. That is assumed. The question is not whether candidate can manipulate voters (isn't that the point of a campaign?) but rather whether voters can manipulate the system by not voting sincerely. However it can be mathematically proven that any deviations from what the voter sincerely desires will reduce the likelihood of the outcome the voter desires. If a voter so strongly favor his favorite candidate that he rates other voters lower, that is an expression of his preferences, not a "strategy." It is also possible to show mathematically that it is not in the best interest to vote either 0 or 1 on everybody (as someone has already pointed out in the disucssion below). The proof is statistical. You look only at the case where the person's vote actually decides the outcome. However, since the person doesn't know what the vote tally will be when he casts his vote there is no way to apportion his vote that will increase the likely of a positive outcome, other than a sincere rating.
Analysis of Range Voting with respect to manipulability (also see: Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem) First I want to examine people's incentives for sincere voting in the absence of perfect information of everybody else's votes. Perfect information seems like an overly strong assumption, that, for many reasons, would never fully obtain. (For one, its a condition that is impossible to achieve on a large scale. I.e., its impossible to give everybody full knowledge of how everybody else will vote, before they have voted.) Instead the degree of precision in predicting other's votes should be incorporated into the analysis dirrectly.
It can be shown that in a range voting system, even a very small number of voters will generate enough uncertainty about how people are voting, so that it will generally be in the interests of each voter to vote sincerely.
This is because any individual's vote only matters when the outcome is really close. Thus any guess he can come up with about how the population will vote will only be relevant when his guess is that the population is closely divided between at least couple options.
Say we are using a range voting system where participants can choose any rational number from 0 to 1 for each of three options A, B, and C.
The manipulability concern is that if a voter's sincere preferences were A= 0.0, B=0.9 and C=1.0, he could instead vote A=0.0, B=0.0 and C=1.0, thus increasing the chance that his favorite candidate C, will win.
For example, if the vote tally before he casts his vote is, A=100.1, B=100.5, and C= 100.0, then by casting his insincere vote he can make, B=100.5 and C=101, resulting in his favorite candidate, C, winning. But by casting his sincere vote he would make, B=101.4 and C=101, resulting in his second favorite, B, winning. Thus the manipulation argument is that he would have an incentive to cast insincere votes.
The problem with this manipulation is that it also increases the chance that his least favorite candidate, A, will win. Lets say A has gotten one more point so that the tally before his vote had instead been, A= 101.1, B=100.5, and C=100, then his manipulation would result in A=101.1, B=100.5, and C=101, resulting in his least favorite candidate A winning. If he voted sincerely the result would have been A=101.1, B=101.4, and C=101, resulting in his second favorite candidate B winning.
Thus his "manipulation" is really an expression of his preferences. What he is really saying is that his preference for C isn't just .1 more than his preference for B, because in that case it wouldn't be worth risking a victory for A whom he despises. Instead his preference for C is so much stronger than his preference for B, that its worth taking a higher risk of getting A. In other words, the difference between A and B isn't so great as the difference between the two of them and C.
This argument assumes that he can't predict the outcome of the vote tallies with a percentage error smaller than 100/(# of voters), which will clearly be true for even very small populations.
However, what if he doesn't believe that all three will be close, but that rather it will look something like this: A=50, B=100, C=100, plus or minus 0.5 for each option.
In this case he wouldn't need to use his spread to reduce option A because option A isn't a threat. Instead he can use his entire spread to express his preference between B and C, voting B=0 and C=1. This case where there are only two close options is the strongest argument for "manipulation," however I think it is still flawed. In the case where the population has so little desire for A that A has no chance of winning, we would want people to use their spreads to indicate their preferences between the likely winners. This is adding valuable information.
For instance, we would not want a single extreme right wing Nazi candidate to squeeze voter's assignments to the legitimate portion of the political spectrum into a range of .99- 1.00, just because "anybody is better than that guy." This is because if mainstream candidates were squeezed into such a narrow range then the outcome between those candidates would end up being essentially random. So its a positive quality, not a manipulable quality, of the range voting system that voters will have an incentive to express their preferences with respect to the realistic candidates.
Of course there is an equilibrium: the more that mainstream voters ignore the unlikely candidate, and use their spread to distinguish between the likely candidates, the closer the unlikely candidate gets to being likely, because overall scores will be lower. This in turn gives voters some incentive to use some of their spread to vote against the unlikely candidate (by increasing scores for all other candidates). The resulting equilibrium would flatten the entire distribution to a limited degree.
On thing is clear however. Rational voters would never have an incentive to misrepresent their ordinal preferences. It would always make sense to give a preferred candidate a higher score than a less-preferred candidate (even if it was only a .000001 difference). (This is a very different result from ranked voting, and borda count, where you are required to vote lower for one candidate in order to vote higher for another. This trade off doesn't exist in range voting.)
Range voters would have an incentive to adjust their cardinal assignments so as best to express their preferences based on two factors: who they like, and who they think is in the running.
Thus, I think, with only the weakest uncertainty assumption (predictions of outcomes with percentage error greater than 100/(# of voters) ), it would always be in voters interest to vote essentially sincerely. (I think the argument could easily be made, that even in the case of no-uncertainty, voter incentive would still be to vote perfectly sincerely. No uncertainty is just carrying the equilibrium description above to the extreme. If you have no uncertainty, then you would want to use 100% of your spread to distinguish between your preferences of the possible winners. Thus you would want to vote 1 for the candidate you most prefered out of those you can make win, and low enough for the other candidates so they don't win. I.e. you are not manipulating, you are expressing your sincere preference.)
And even in the case of no uncertainty, voters would never have an incentive to distort their ordinal preferences (so if non-distortion of ordinal preferences is the measure of sincerity, then votes would always have the incentive to be perfectly sincere).
"No elected official in the United States is known to endorse range voting." Is this sentence neutral and/or relevant? True though it may be, it seems loaded... What does it add to the article? If it's adding something, could it be put in better context? FleckerMan ( talk) 04:29, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
With range voting, is it permissible to leave some of the numbers out?
Say allocate a (4) and a (1) and leave the others as (0) and (0).
In this example of range voting, the weights go 4-3-2-1.
If Formula One races, they give the winner an extra weight, something like 8-4-2-1.
Who choses what weights to give?
Syd1435 05:56, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)
It is up to the voter within the bounds set by the rules. -- Henrygb 18:10, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Range Voting is ratings. The rating you give to one candidate do not constrict your freedom in rating another. A voting method where the voter is forced to give a descending number of points is called Borda count. The restriction with descending numbers was made to prevent voting in extremes but it brings new problems. The Borda count is generally not called a version of Range Voting. 84.144.91.50 08:51, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
The article currently states
However, I don't agree with this. Suppose there are three candidates and you are voting within the range [0, 1], which you would like to give votes of 0, 1/2, and 1, in order. Then the article would suggest that one of the following four voting patterns is optimal, but I wish to show that none of them are:
Anyone agree or disagree?
While calculating the average fails the Majority Criterion I don't see how using the median could fail that. If the highest median is shared by several candidates one could fall back to the average as a tiebraker. Does this introduce new bugs? 84.144.91.50 12:58, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
One implementation of median ratings is Majority Choice Approval. Disadvantages of this are, for instance, the failure of Participation and consistency. KVenzke 15:19, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
D'oh. I already read the MCA article. Thanks for the fast answer. I also read about that version of MCA where the voter can use a ABCDF rating where A,B,C are calculated as the same, so it is merely an expression without having an effect on who the winner is (however, it could be used for having an effect on the winner's salary or suspending him from running for office in two consecutive rounds). But my above description of using the median could be used for any range while avoiding that. Does it introduce new bugs in relation to MCA then? (Maybe this belongs to the MCA discussion) 84.144.91.50 19:31, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with an MCA variant in which some slots are functionally identical to others. I don't think using the average to break median ratings ties creates problems, but it might be more attractive to break the tie based on which candidate comes closer to having a higher median. KVenzke 20:09, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
I had to cut a lot of recent material for being original research, POV, not notable, not cited, and/or incorrect. I'm open to discussing it. KVenzke 05:03, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
Votes | Probabilities | Utility | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
X | Y | Z | X | Y | Z | Exact | Approx |
1 | 0 | 0 | 27/40 | 13/80 | 13/80 | 121/160 | 0.75625 |
1 | 1/4 | 0 | 320537/491520 | 53179/245760 | 12925/98304 | 31143/40960 | 0.760327 |
1 | 1/2 | 0 | 953/1536 | 205/768 | 173/1536 | 193/256 | 0.753906 |
1 | 3/4 | 0 | 18319/32768 | 27753/81920 | 16739/163840 | 29837/40960 | 0.728442 |
1 | 1 | 0 | 109/240 | 109/240 | 11/120 | 109/160 | 0.68125 |
Response to KVenzke 03:29, 17 September 2005 (UTC) by Boris Alexeev 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
For simplicity, I'm writing with zero indentation.
At this point, I don't think there's any chance that either of us will change our opinion. I think it's a shame that there is an article on Wikipedia that I believe could be better, but that's just too bad. I will answer one or two of your points, as well as suggest changes, so as to complete the discussion.
Responses
I'm actually unconvinced of the fact that in certain, reasonable models with many people, the same thing doesn't happen. I may do some analysis myself to determine the optimal vote in certain situations, although only because I am interested and not for this article. Unfortunately, your statement is not "provable".
I'd venture to say that using intermediate votes is helpful when either there are a small number of voters, or you have good information. As for why "in general" is confusing, see Mathematical jargon:
I think the quote speaks for itself, but in short, I interpreted "in general" to mean "always". See below.
In my example, I assume the other voters are voting randomly. It's hard to have less information about the other voters. Indeed, if I actually knew how they were voting, I would simply vote as in approval and make sure that the best candidate that I can make win does win.
Suggested changes
For the reason described above, the phrase "in general" can be misleading. I suggest changing it to "in most cases" as well as an explanation of where this statement is supposedly true, e.g.:
My purpose in suggesting this change is four-fold: (0) to finish this discussion and compromise, (1) to clear up what the article says, (2) state everything that is "known" about the topic, and (3) make the article applicable even in cases with small population. I think range voting can be very useful in small committees (indeed, I use it myself), and is not only applicable to public elections. Of course, feel free to reword.
Boris Alexeev 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I call b.s. on this passage, and I'm going to remove it:
There are several things wrong here:
-- RobLa 18:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
It is enormously controversial to claim that any voting system is exempted from Arrow's theorem. For example, first past the post clearly isn't exempted, yet isn't a ranked system. In particular, my complaint is about this paragraph:
I've been asking around about this page, (see Talk:Social Choice and Individual Values) and it was pointed out that this claim isn't cited. I'm removing the paragraph, and asking that a source be cited before reinserting it. -- RobLa 18:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
If a candidate is rated more highly than another candidate, then the other must be rated lower. Given ballots with scores ranging from 0 to 1, candidate A on a ballot with score 1.0, B with a score less than 1.0, and C with a score lower than B, changing the ballot to express C has a higher utility than A requires reducing the scores for A and B. If B keeps the same relative utility as A, then the score for B will reduce less than the score for A. C goes on to lose (irrelevant alternative, as C's entire score may be 1.0, with all other voters rating C as 0), and A's slim margin is smaller than the absolute change of the difference between A and B, and so the winner moves from A to B. By the same token, we can say that this is the voter's *natural* ballot, and that the existence of C caused B to win rather than A. It is not possible to argue that A, B, and C are not scored independently here, as there is no meaning to any score assigned to any candidate except in relation to the other candidates: independent scoring can only mean the candidate with the greatest utility is given the greatest possible score, and all other candidates are examined in proportion to that candidate but not in regards to preference for that candidate or others, as there is no absolute basis for any score given to any candidate (i.e. this definition of "independent" is the only one that isn't absurd because utility is dimensionless and there would be no frame of reference to score a candidate's utility except against some conceptual maximum). Much of the article is based on the non-peer-reviewed writings of advocates, although some is using shoddy published research (Baujard seriously?), so the article is highly-questionable, may be subject to the balance fallacy (score voting is the social choice theory equivalent of climate change denial), and might fail NPOV by way of being largely supported by citing two non-peer-reviewed advocacy organizations run by the same people. John Moser ( talk) 15:47, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I added some wording indicating that this system is not actually in current use "for single seat election", "political elections", etc. Also, especially in the "Properties" section, the writing seems to be getting fairly close to WP:NOR - it is not a "Condorcet method" to "many people", but "Center for Range Voting" has improved the relevant definitions to show that it is. Given that the Center appears to be primarily Warren Smith, who is the key person behind this conception of Range Voting, most non-voting-system-wonk readers such as myself can't help but feeling the article may not be properly neutral. Is Range Voting studied more widely under other terms, or has Dr. Smith's work been taken up elsewhere. There are no independent references. - David Oberst 03:06, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Someone with a dial-up internet connection who has not registered as a user continues to make changes to article content without discussion or citation. I am reverting these changes. -- Fahrenheit451 22:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Here is an example of this anonymous user's editing and use of personal attacks. From history log: "14:02, 9 March 2007 71.252.98.213 (Talk) (←Undid revision 113762512 by Fahrenheit451 (talk)This does not need discussion. Fahrenheit451 is a hack)"-- Fahrenheit451 14:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
On the substance, this is is one phrase that the anonymous user is inserting:
Range voting in which only two different votes may be submitted (0 and 1, for example) is equivalent to approval voting. As with approval voting, voters must weigh the adverse impact on their favorite candidate of ranking other candidates highly. It shares with approval voting failure to meet the majority criterion or the later-no-harm criterion.
The last sentence is this user's insertion. It is a redundancy. The paragraph is noting that Range with only two options is "equivalent" to Approval. Actually, it *is* Approval. Thus the comment that "it" -- i.e., Approval, shares with Approval [characteristics] is a tautology. If any additional comment is needed on the Properties of Range, it should be in the Properties section.
In particular, the term "failure," while used technically by election methods writers, is a loaded word. It is not a "failure," in more common language, of Range and Approval to not satisfy the Majority Criterion, rather, it would be quite equivalent to say that the Majority Criterion will, under some circumstances, require a clearly inferior election result that Approval and Range would rectify. Abd 05:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
There is an open issue as to whether Range voting satisfies majority criterion. In reading the Majority criterion wiki entry, it appears to me that range voting does not satisfy it. Let me try to prove that by contrary example:
Consider this case:
Three candidates X, Y, and Z. Three voters Able, Baker, Charlie.
They vote as follows (scale is 1 to 100):
Able: X: 3 of 100 Y: 2 of 100 Z: 1 of 100 Baker: X: 3 of 100 Y: 2 of 100 Z: 1 of 100 Charlie: X: 1 of 100 Y: 100 of 100 Z: 1 of 100
As I am reading the range voting definition, candidate Y wins while a majority (Able and Baker) range candidate X as their first choice. If my analysis is true, then I contend that it is accurate to state that range voting does not strictly satisfy the majority criterion. QED.
Is my thinking correct? Thanks. WilliamKF 23:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Formula would be: f(vote) = (vote - voter's low vote) * (high possible vote - low possible vote) / (voter's high - voter's low vote) + low possible vote.
So for Able, their low vote was 1, their high vote was 3, their high possible vote (same for all voters) is 100, their low possible vote (same for all voters) is 1. f(3) => 100 f(2) => 50.5 f(1) => 1.
Able: X: 3 => 100 of 100 Y: 2 => 50.5 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100 Baker: X: 3 => 100 of 100 Y: 2 => 50.5 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100 Charlie: X: 1 => 1 of 100 Y: 100 => 100 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100
Now this makes the analysis more complicated. Can anyone create an example which violates majority criterion or later-no-harm criterion using this change? If not, the question becomes whether my tweak is part of the official definition for range voting or not. WilliamKF 00:25, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
William, I think you have solved a problem. The majority criterion is defined in terms of ranked systems, not rated, the latter of which Range is. You have essentially fixed the definition to encompass range voting.-- Fahrenheit451 05:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Nonsense. E.g.
Candidates A B C Daisy 10 9 0 Alice 10 9 0 Janet 1 10 0
Candidate B wins by a landslide, even though the votes are already scaled.
1) Having the majority win makes little sense, compared to having the winner who produces the greatest social utility. That is, it's not a problem if a voting method sometimes fails to elect the Condorcet winner (when there even is one); what matters is the average satisfaction of the electorate with the result. That's expected value. Any voter with an ounce of economics knowledge wants the highest expected value from a transaction. 2) With 5 candidates in a race, there is a 25% chance that no Condorcet winner even exists. With 10 candidates in the race, the odds are 50/50. Worrying about picking a Condorcet winner is therefore often entirely a moot point. 3) Range Voting elects the Condorcet winner (when one exists) more often than plurality any situation, and under some plausible assumptions of voter behavior may actually be a better Condorcet method than real Condorcet methods. -- BROKEN LADDER
The problem is that no voting system can satisfy the Majority Criterion if the Majority does not vote their *strict* preference. The Criterion was not designed to allow "weak votes." Range allows weak votes. These votes can be considered as partial abstentions. In an example above, a vote of 1, 2, and 3, on a scale of 100, was considered an expression of preference by members of a "majority." In fact, these votes indicate serious dislike of all those candidates. Technically, though, they are "preferences." Yet they are seriously weak ones. Ranked methods treat preferences as absolute, and know nothing of weak votes. Consider it this way: a majority may have a preference, but is this preference guaranteed to win -- with any system -- if the majority abstains from voting? One way of looking at range is that each voter has N votes to cast, and may cast as many as they wish for any given candidate. (In other words, it is Approval voting with 100 votes instead of the normal one.)
If the majority have a preference, as shown in weak votes, these votes may be considered as partial abstentions. As if, in the first example above, 97% of that majority stayed home. So, for starters, it is appropriate to consider normalization in applying the Majority Criterion to Range. However, Range still can fail to elect the preference of a fully-voting majority. This happens when the majority also gives votes to another candidate. By doing this, again, the majority is effectively abstaining -- to a degree -- from that pairwise election. And thus, again, the first preference of a majority can fail to win.
Generally, as the Majority Criterion is usually stated and interpreted, it must be said that Range does not satisfy it. However, it only "fails" when the Majority, to some degree or other, *consents* to this by allowing votes to other candidates. The objection Range advocates have is to the loaded use, in articles for the general public, if the term "fail," even though it is technically correct.
The Majority Criterion was designed for ranked methods, and Range is not a ranked method, though one can infer rankings from a Range ballot. Some have proposed a revised Majority Criterion which requires the majority to vote strict preference to guarantee victory for the majority preference. It is the freedom that Range grants to the voter to vote weak preference that creates the ambiguity.
Under Range, the majority has the power to elect its preference. It may choose not to exercise this power. Under Approval, as an example, there may be a candidate preferred by the majority, but if the majority also votes to approve another candidate, that candidate may not win. In this case the permission that the majority has given is quite explicit. They, supposedly, had a preference but they did not use the means that the method provided to express it, which in Approval is to bullet vote. The same is true in Range.
What if, under standard Plurality, the majority were to vote for two candidates? The result would be that the ballots would be thrown out. Under Approval, the effect on the pairwise election between those two candidates is the same. Voting for more than one is abstaining from the pairwise elections between those approved and participating in every other pairwise election. And Range allows intermediate votes.
Really, the first question to address is the much simpler one: does Approval satisfy the Majority Criterion?
If the majority is not aware that it is a majority, it might prefer a candidate but act in such a manner as to elect another candidate. It can do the same under Plurality. We understand that Plurality satisfies the Majority Criterion because, we think, the majority can simply vote for its preference and it will win. However, Approval and Range allow exactly the same voting. If a majority knows that it is a majority (or close to a majority), it is easy for that majority to vote to win its preference under Approval. But what if it does not know? So it hedges its bets -- under Approval it approves additional candidates. Under Plurality, it might vote, instead of for its preference, for another candidate which it imagines is one of the top two. Under Range, it ranks some other candidates than its preference above zero. It is putting some of its weight behind these others. And if others do not support its preference and enough of them do support a candidate which the majority has made room for through its support, again, the first preference of the majority can win. With Approval it is very clear what is going on.
It is ironic that Plurality is universally considered to satisfy the Majority Criterion when it has a *worse* problem with majority preference, which is only not considered because normally the majority is aware of its power. Yet a majority aware of its power and which chooses to use it can prevail under Approval and Range quite the same as under Plurality. Abd 19:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe that there is a mathematical proof that in any election with more than two candidates, it is impossible to come up with a fair voting system. If anyone can find this in the literature, I think it would be useful to cite. Given there is no such thing as a perfect voting scheme when there are more than two choices, the task them becomes trying to find one that is a good compromise. WilliamKF 21:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there is some esoteric voting method criteria, like later-no-harm, which could be listed, but majority criterion is well-known as accepted as a legitimate criterion.-- Fahrenheit451 02:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
The article says that range voting is a system "for one-seat elections." I disagree, because range voting ranks all candidates, the very same ballot could be used in a multi-seat election. The top n ranked candidates would win seats. Am I missing something? maxsch 21:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are missing something. It's easiest to see with Approval, the simplest Range method.
Using a "top n" method for assigning seats would suffer from the same problem as Plurality methods that allow voters n votes. Essentially, the majority can get all the seats! This is why STV methods reweights votes as seats are created, and the multiwinner form of Range Voting, Reweighted Range Voting (RRV) does the same thing. The details are complex, but the basic idea, as an example, is that the votes of someone whose top ranked candidate is elected are then devalued, since they got a representative. RRV is more complicated than that, but it's the same idea.
STV is quite a good multiwinner method, but always is vulnerable to breakdown at the end of the process when actual eliminations start. RRV avoids that. No candidates are eliminated, but winners are declared one at a time until the n seats have been filled. Each time a winner is declared, ballots with votes for that candidate are reweighted. There is a form of Approval voting which can be used similarly, but there is a zealous article deleter, Special:Contributions/Yellowbeard, who has been going about getting election methods articles killed, and the article on it was killed Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Proportional_approval_voting. Apparently not enough of the Voting Methods people are watching for this. We could get it back, if we want. But I can't do everything! (The vote was three to two for delete. Normally, that might not be enough to result in a delete, but it's up to the administrator who decides to take action, and apparently the administrator in question preferred the arguments of Yellowbeard and the other two. Yellowbeard has proposed the deletion of many election methods articles, some of them were actually significant, and this one was cited in many other articles -- so he went around deleting all the references.... which does make sense if the article is inappropriate.)
Abd 14:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I just wrote a comment on the talk page for Bucklin voting that brought up a problem with the voting example used on this page. We have:
Suppose that voters each decided to grant from 1 to 10 points to each city such that their most liked choice got 10 points, and least liked choice got 1 point, with the intermediate choices getting 5 points and 2 points.
This is actually quite unlikely as a voting pattern. Range works best when votes are proportional to voter utilities, and a Memphis voter has a *far* higher utility for a Memphis capital than for a Nashville one. It is more or less traditional, another small problem, to have the minimum vote in Range be zero, not one, and that is what I'll do here. (My apologies for the very rough formatting, I really should use a table, but this is Talk....
Memphis wins. This is actually the best result, probably! Essentially, it would save the most gas and citizen travel time. But in a real election, we would be much more likely to see Memphis bullet vote, likewise Nashville, and Chattanooga and Knoxville voters would give 10s to Nashville as well as to their own cities; indeed, the latter would probably give 10s to three cities. Essentially, Range reduces to Approval under certain conditions, and this election is one of them; standard Approval strategy is to pick the two front-runners and place the approval cutoff between them. With this strategy, Nashville wins, and the Memphis voters can't really do anything about it; attempts by Knoxville and Chattanooga voters to vote otherwise could lead to Memphis winning, a poor outcome for them.
(In a just system, the capital would probably be Memphis and certain tax or other advantages would be given, in exchange, to citizens in the other cities to compensate them for the increased travel time. I know of one national organization which has its annual conference every year in the same city. Unjust? No. They have a travel equalization fund, and all delegates pay the same amount to that fund, which then pays the travel expenses for all delegates. So the same travel expenses are paid by all delegates. by having a single city every year, the work of setting up the conference is minimized, and it is also convenient to the national office.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd ( talk • contribs) 04:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
There is a POV tag on this article, placed by StrengthOfNations probably as an outcome of discussions at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Range_voting, which had been started by that editor. However, the problem with the article is not a POV problem, necessarily, but the use of sources not acceptable (or at least not fully acceptable) under Wikipedia policies, see WP:SOURCE. This is not a POV dispute, which is a content dispute, and no significant content dispute is apparent from Talk, nor is there any edit war going on. In other words, if an editor disputes content here, the editor is free to fix it instead of placing a POV tag, which should be connected with either a specific dispute -- which should be discussed here for resolution -- or a general characterization of the article as being unbalanced, which, again, should be discussed here so that the nature of the dispute is clear and likewise the remedy.
As an example of a *general* POV dispute, see Instant-runoff voting. The tag there was placed by a user not specifically involved in a content dispute, and specific problems were not asserted as part of the placing of the tag, but, the difference is, editors did confirm the reasonableness of the tag placement, and continue, there, to discuss and negotiate, either directly in Talk or indirectly through a series of edits, the remedy to both specific problems with the article and the overall balance problem. It's a process that takes time.
However, here, there has been no assertion of specific POV problems. I could agree that there is an overall balance problem, but the solution to that *in the absence of specific problems* would be to begin to add balancing material. Given that no attempt to do that has appeared either from the editor placing the tag or anyone else, I plan to remove the tag. *However*, any editor is free to put it back, and, if this is accompanied by any sign of an intention to act to remedy either specific problems or an overall balance problem, I would not contest this. I'm only contesting a general placement with no assertion of specific problems and no participation in remedying either them or a general imbalance problem. In that case, it is merely a drive-by shooting, which we must always meet with quick protection of the victim, first, and resolution of any legitimate dispute, later.
In my decision on this, I have also considered the likelihood that StrengthOfNations is a sock puppet or straw puppet (see WP:SOCK), which is reasonably clear to me from Special:Contributions/StrengthOfNations. Because I consider it largely a waste of time to try to *prove* this, at this point, I have not filed the suspicion or a checkuser request, and this consideration alone cannot be used as a counterargument to any edit. Sock puppet contributions, in my opinion, are only to be disregarded, in terms of judging the balance of opinion or the disregard and reversion of clearly meritless edits. Sock puppets may often make good contributions, which is why there is no automated process to remove reversible edits merely on the basis that the user was found to be a sock, and all editors, including suspected sock puppets, have the right of WP:AGF.
In any case, if any editor doesn't like my removal of the POV tag, please, justify its replacement here, preferably with examples of what is wrong with the article, aside from the obvious need for better sourcing, and put it back! (Lots of articles have poor sourcing and are still NPOV, because what is not sourced is still either generally accepted as true or is properly attributed as an opinion.) -- Abd ( talk) 02:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
(I believe that this section refers to Warren D Smith's article here. Homunq ( talk) 16:41, 10 June 2009 (UTC))
Hi, this is James Green-Armytage, and I just read this article for the first time. I'm glad that it wasn't deleted, because I think that this is a theoretically important voting system. Anyway, one thing that struck me when reading the article is that the "empirical tests" section might be considered original research. On the other hand, I find WS's study to be interesting, and think that it should at least get an external link, if not a section in the article. Has this already been discussed?
Also, on first my first skim through the article, I'm not finding a section pointing out the fact that "utility" is a theoretical phenomenon that cannot be measured (i.e. placed on a scale allowing interpersonal comparison). As far as I can tell, the same would apply to "Bayesian regret", but I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with that idea. -- Hermitage ( talk) 22:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Here's my point of view on the whole OR issue here:
-The mathematical / monte-carlo experimental paper which these results derive from, although it is not peer-reviewed and published, is far, far more of an RS than the 4 links to CRV screeds by the same author which are currently in the footnotes. (No offense with the word "screed" - I just mean that it's written for advocacy, the same author is also capable of writing academically)
-What the paper actually "proves" is best case (no strategic voting) and some near-worst cases (maximal strategic voting) for each system. It makes no attempt to address the issue of how prevalent strategy would be under each system, nor does it consider the more-pathological cases of biased strategy (one interest group more likely to use strategy than others) or uninformed voters. As such, it cannot give an expected bayesian regret value for any system; all it can do is establish an upper bound and a (debatable) lower bound on that value for each system. Thus, the paper's own conclusion that Range voting is superior to all others for both best and worst cases is misleading, because Range in practice could lead to more prevalent (though less extreme) strategic voting and thus a worse result than, say, Condorcet.
-(Here's where my own OR comes in) More solid conclusions would be that, measuring by Bayesian regret, Range is superior to all others in the absence of strategic voting; and that Range (along with the Approval special case) are the only systems which are always superior to Plurality despite any uniform amount of strategic voting.
-Another conclusion, which does not relate to Range, is that Condorcet is superior to IRV at any given level of strategy. We can use the "any given level of strategy" comparison between Condorcet and IRV, unlike between Range and IRV/Condorcet, since the motivations and kinds of strategy are more comparable, and in fact the consensus is that IRV promotes more strategy than Condorcet.
(If you think from the above that I favor Condorcet over Range, you're wrong. I favor Range, but I regard it as an open question, and above I'm simply arguing from the clear evidence. The questions which are NOT open IMO are: [Range, Condorcet, IRV] are all superior theoretically to [Plurality, Borda]; [Range, Condorcet] are theoretically superior to IRV; IRV has more of a real-world track record and social movement behind it than [Range, Condorcet]; and silly partisanship on this issue stands in the way of progress.)
Homunq ( talk) 16:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
A merge tag has been placed in this article, proposing a merge with Allocation voting. This would be a blatant error: Range and Allocation voting are quite different methods, quite the same as Approval is different from Plurality. Allocation voting *is* similar to (or identical with) Cumulative voting. So, if no objection appears here in short order -- the merge proposer did not start a discussion; the proposer is an obvious sock puppet (see Special:Contributions/Yellowbeard and look at the registration of the account and then the immediate activity) who has been, for a long time, acting to kill voting systems articles (with AfDs and, now, directly) -- I plan to remove the tag. -- Abd ( talk) 19:46, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
This being a clear error and no response, I'm removing the tag. If anyone disagrees, please replace it and discuss here. -- Abd ( talk) 18:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
An editor removed the Category:Positional electoral systems tag from the article, with the summary: "(remove Category:Positional electoral systems, no ranking, no fixed points assigned)." [4]
This is not correct. While Warren Smith has stated that he prefers unlimited resolution Range, which would complicate the issue, but all current proposed and use Range voting systems provide a fixed number of position slots. For example, MSNBC polls taken after early Republican and Democratic candidate debates were what I call Range 3: there were three possible votes: -1, 0, +1. The default vote for each candidate was 0.
A Positional voting system is "a ranked voting method in which the options receive points based on their position on each ballot, and the option with the most points wins." Borda count is a positional system, as is plurality and approval. However, these methods differ, of course, in how the points are assigned, limitations on votes, etc.
Range Voting is precisely equivalent to Borda, except that (1) equal ranking is allowed, (2) some ranks may be empty.
In real Range ballots, there might be, as an example, ten positions for each candidate. As far as the voting equipment is concerned, these are slots, the equivalent of levers on lever machines, or they are bubbles to be filled and counted. Each position produces a particular point for a particular candidate. The meaning of the bubbles on a paper ballot might be points from 0 to 9. The points are summed, and the candidate with the most points wins. This is a positional voting system. I replaced the Category tag. -- Abd ( talk) 00:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
(Now, this seems to conflict with "ranked voting method." Range is a ranked method which allows equal ranking, that's all. However, it is possible that the definition of "positional voting system" requires strict ranking, in which case my argument here would be incorrect, and, contrary to Positional voting system, Approval is not a positional system either. It would take more research than I could do at the moment to confirm either position.) -- Abd ( talk) 00:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
This article states: Guy Ottewell, who coined the term approval voting, now endorses...
The Approval voting article states The system was described in 1976 by Guy Ottewell and also by Robert J. Weber, who coined the term "approval voting."
Who coined the term "approval voting," Guy Ottewell or Robert J. Weber? One of these articles is wrong. Geoffrey.landis ( talk) 03:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there any good way to contact the guy behind RangeVote.net? -- AB ( talk) 22:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
This phrase in the article is quite misleading: " Range voting systems (including Approval voting), unlike any more commonly-used voting systems, give no reason to ever dishonestly rank a less-preferred candidate over a more-preferred one." It doesn't give an incentive to rank a less-preferred candidate OVER a more-prefered one," but it mostly certainly creates an incentive to rank such a candidate EQUALLY in trying to defeat a least-preferred candidate. This would be an ongoing dilemma if this system were ever used.
Note that the main strategic issue would be backers of candidates giving minimal support to other candidates while hoping that less savvy voters will give some degree of support to more than their most preferred candidate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.213.24 ( talk) 16:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
This is an important criterion to measure a voting system. Why edit it out unless this article is just supposed to be a promotional piece.
I removed the advertising copy for the Center for Range Voting and attempted to restore a neutral tone to this section. I wonder though, why is this section here at all? Other Electoral Methods articles do not include an Advocacy section. Links to the advocacy sites are already included as External links, indeed at the top of the list, so all this section really adds to the article is the statement that no elected official endorses this method. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 21:10, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
I've also replaced rangevoting.org as the source for Ottewell's opinion on range voting vs approval voting with Ottewell's own website. Ottewell's statement on range voting on his own site is much milder than the statement provided on rangevoting.org, and the provenance of the more aggressive statement on rangevoting.org isn't clear. Caution with respect to attributed statements dictates using Ottewell's own site as the source. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 21:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
I tagged the statement that the Spartan "shout" is equivalent to range voting as original research. The New York Times article cited to support the statement is about social fragmentation on the Internet. The Spartan "Shout" was introduced as analogous to the deterioration of Internet discussions into name-calling, rants, and flaming, an example of an "impoverished form of democracy." There is no mention of range voting or any other voting system. Though it's a very colorful addition to the article lead, it's inaccurate per its cited source and must go. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 22:00, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
It was discussed in the book Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone. I point this out, because in the article there was a question as to this piece of info's origin. I believe he was quoting someone else also, but I don't remember whom. HighbulpIII ( talk) 08:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm considering moving the article to Score voting; I'll tell you why. The major sources have been shifting to refer to the system this way. Electology does, and now even Rangevoting.org:
Also, perhaps there should be an Etymology section. The lede is heavy with boldface. – RVJ ( talk) 02:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm.... blind google search, 31 million down to 367 finds, a bit more work to figure which matches actually refer to this article subject! Tom Ruen ( talk) 02:33, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. No consensus established. ( closed by non-admin page mover) -- Dane talk 04:54, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Range voting →
Score voting – Agree Electology and rangevoting.org both seem to prefer "score" over "range", and it sounds less like "ranked"
71.167.65.224 (
talk) 00:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. --
Dane
talk
22:13, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Came to suggest the same move. Both https://electology.org and http://rangevoting.org, two of the biggest advocates for this method, now use the primary name "Score Voting", with "Range Voting" as a secondary name. In my dozens of anecdotal experiences explaining this method to a new audience, they often mishear or confuse "Range" for "Ranked" (which many more people are already familiar with). Strongly advocate we rename this page to Score voting to make the distinction more clear. Again, in my anecdotal experience, the name "Score voting" makes sense to a new audience: "you give each of the different options a score". – dsernst ( talk) 15:57, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Actually I found a few references that distinguish between them and listed the variants in Cardinal voting:
See Cardinal voting for references — Omegatron ( talk) 05:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
While some of the examples (including the one I just added) are mathematically equivalent to Score, I'm on the fence as to whether they should be here if the ballots don't have actual numbers on them. Maybe those examples should be moved to a Usage section in Cardinal voting? — Omegatron ( talk) 01:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2017.09.006: "Apart from independence, another feature of evaluative voting, also encountered in several political systems, is that voters can express some degree of preference. Three-level grade-voting is possible in Latvia, where voters can cross out, leave as it is, or mark a “plus” for each candidate of her chosen party list"
doi: 10.1177/1465116515580180: "Voters vote for one party list. On her chosen list, a voter can cross out the names of some candidates and give a ‘+’ to others. The score of a candidate is equal to the number of voters who chose the list minus the number of voters who crossed out his name, plus the number of voters who gave him a ‘+’. Within a list, candidates are elected according to their scores."
Latvia_(European_Parliament_constituency)
Is it a stretch to call this score voting, though? — Omegatron ( talk) 01:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Is statutory voting ( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/statutoryvoting.asp, mentioned in https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/cumulative-voting) just a case of score voting, except that each shareholder's ballot is weighted and given a range of allowed values according to the number of shares they have?
If I don't get any objections within some arbitrary timeframe, I plan to add it to the "Non-political use" section.
Solomon Ucko ( talk) 08:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
The excessive use of the "rangevoting.org" page as a source here worries me a bit, since I do not feel like citations to this website on a scientific topic satisfy WP:SCHOLARSHIP, as it is practically just an unreviewed blog-post. I am also not too sure about better citations, though. Jannikp97 ( talk) 01:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
![]() | Score Runoff Voting was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 13 April 2017 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Score voting. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
![]() | Center for Range Voting was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 24 July 2009 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Score voting. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
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Memphis to memphis = 0
nashvile to memphis = 312.5
chatanooga to memphis = 431.5
Knoxville to memphis = 555.3
memphis score = 324.825
Nashiville to Nashville = 0
Memphis to Nashville = 312.5
Chattanoga to Nashville = 185.4
Knoxville to Nashville = 256.6
Nashville score = 188.625
Chattanooga to Chattanooga = 0
Memphis to Chattanooga = 431.5
Nashivile to Chattanooga = 185.4
Knoxville to Chattanooga = 154.9
Chatanooga score = 190.7
Knoxville to knoxville = 0
Memphis to Knoxville = 555.3
Nashvile to Knoxville = 256.6
Chattagoona to Knoxville = 154.9
Knoxville score = 214.7
The score, is the average the distance between cities and nashiville wins with smallest distance. 201.78.176.52 ( talk) 12:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
multiple-candidate elections. Any possibility that a favorable result will occur due to inaccurate rankings is overwhelmed by the possibility that a non-favorable result will be more likely to occur.
I'm pretty sure that it's been proven that correct range voting strategy is to vote it as approval, at least when the counting method is total score.
If each city votes honestly on a scale of 1-10 with their favorite candidate at 10 and their least favorite at 0 and the remaining candidates proportional to their relative distance, the results are:
I plan on editing the results of the example to fit these more accurate figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monkthatgotfunk ( talk • contribs) 21:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this right, I mean, on approval voting, just because you hated him this doenst mean you dont approve him, on a ballot with 100 candidates some people will not look at every single candidate and vote (or not) accordingly to their preferences.
I removed the following text, because it doesn't make any sense. Obviously candidate will do everything in their power to win. That is assumed. The question is not whether candidate can manipulate voters (isn't that the point of a campaign?) but rather whether voters can manipulate the system by not voting sincerely. However it can be mathematically proven that any deviations from what the voter sincerely desires will reduce the likelihood of the outcome the voter desires. If a voter so strongly favor his favorite candidate that he rates other voters lower, that is an expression of his preferences, not a "strategy." It is also possible to show mathematically that it is not in the best interest to vote either 0 or 1 on everybody (as someone has already pointed out in the disucssion below). The proof is statistical. You look only at the case where the person's vote actually decides the outcome. However, since the person doesn't know what the vote tally will be when he casts his vote there is no way to apportion his vote that will increase the likely of a positive outcome, other than a sincere rating.
Analysis of Range Voting with respect to manipulability (also see: Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem) First I want to examine people's incentives for sincere voting in the absence of perfect information of everybody else's votes. Perfect information seems like an overly strong assumption, that, for many reasons, would never fully obtain. (For one, its a condition that is impossible to achieve on a large scale. I.e., its impossible to give everybody full knowledge of how everybody else will vote, before they have voted.) Instead the degree of precision in predicting other's votes should be incorporated into the analysis dirrectly.
It can be shown that in a range voting system, even a very small number of voters will generate enough uncertainty about how people are voting, so that it will generally be in the interests of each voter to vote sincerely.
This is because any individual's vote only matters when the outcome is really close. Thus any guess he can come up with about how the population will vote will only be relevant when his guess is that the population is closely divided between at least couple options.
Say we are using a range voting system where participants can choose any rational number from 0 to 1 for each of three options A, B, and C.
The manipulability concern is that if a voter's sincere preferences were A= 0.0, B=0.9 and C=1.0, he could instead vote A=0.0, B=0.0 and C=1.0, thus increasing the chance that his favorite candidate C, will win.
For example, if the vote tally before he casts his vote is, A=100.1, B=100.5, and C= 100.0, then by casting his insincere vote he can make, B=100.5 and C=101, resulting in his favorite candidate, C, winning. But by casting his sincere vote he would make, B=101.4 and C=101, resulting in his second favorite, B, winning. Thus the manipulation argument is that he would have an incentive to cast insincere votes.
The problem with this manipulation is that it also increases the chance that his least favorite candidate, A, will win. Lets say A has gotten one more point so that the tally before his vote had instead been, A= 101.1, B=100.5, and C=100, then his manipulation would result in A=101.1, B=100.5, and C=101, resulting in his least favorite candidate A winning. If he voted sincerely the result would have been A=101.1, B=101.4, and C=101, resulting in his second favorite candidate B winning.
Thus his "manipulation" is really an expression of his preferences. What he is really saying is that his preference for C isn't just .1 more than his preference for B, because in that case it wouldn't be worth risking a victory for A whom he despises. Instead his preference for C is so much stronger than his preference for B, that its worth taking a higher risk of getting A. In other words, the difference between A and B isn't so great as the difference between the two of them and C.
This argument assumes that he can't predict the outcome of the vote tallies with a percentage error smaller than 100/(# of voters), which will clearly be true for even very small populations.
However, what if he doesn't believe that all three will be close, but that rather it will look something like this: A=50, B=100, C=100, plus or minus 0.5 for each option.
In this case he wouldn't need to use his spread to reduce option A because option A isn't a threat. Instead he can use his entire spread to express his preference between B and C, voting B=0 and C=1. This case where there are only two close options is the strongest argument for "manipulation," however I think it is still flawed. In the case where the population has so little desire for A that A has no chance of winning, we would want people to use their spreads to indicate their preferences between the likely winners. This is adding valuable information.
For instance, we would not want a single extreme right wing Nazi candidate to squeeze voter's assignments to the legitimate portion of the political spectrum into a range of .99- 1.00, just because "anybody is better than that guy." This is because if mainstream candidates were squeezed into such a narrow range then the outcome between those candidates would end up being essentially random. So its a positive quality, not a manipulable quality, of the range voting system that voters will have an incentive to express their preferences with respect to the realistic candidates.
Of course there is an equilibrium: the more that mainstream voters ignore the unlikely candidate, and use their spread to distinguish between the likely candidates, the closer the unlikely candidate gets to being likely, because overall scores will be lower. This in turn gives voters some incentive to use some of their spread to vote against the unlikely candidate (by increasing scores for all other candidates). The resulting equilibrium would flatten the entire distribution to a limited degree.
On thing is clear however. Rational voters would never have an incentive to misrepresent their ordinal preferences. It would always make sense to give a preferred candidate a higher score than a less-preferred candidate (even if it was only a .000001 difference). (This is a very different result from ranked voting, and borda count, where you are required to vote lower for one candidate in order to vote higher for another. This trade off doesn't exist in range voting.)
Range voters would have an incentive to adjust their cardinal assignments so as best to express their preferences based on two factors: who they like, and who they think is in the running.
Thus, I think, with only the weakest uncertainty assumption (predictions of outcomes with percentage error greater than 100/(# of voters) ), it would always be in voters interest to vote essentially sincerely. (I think the argument could easily be made, that even in the case of no-uncertainty, voter incentive would still be to vote perfectly sincerely. No uncertainty is just carrying the equilibrium description above to the extreme. If you have no uncertainty, then you would want to use 100% of your spread to distinguish between your preferences of the possible winners. Thus you would want to vote 1 for the candidate you most prefered out of those you can make win, and low enough for the other candidates so they don't win. I.e. you are not manipulating, you are expressing your sincere preference.)
And even in the case of no uncertainty, voters would never have an incentive to distort their ordinal preferences (so if non-distortion of ordinal preferences is the measure of sincerity, then votes would always have the incentive to be perfectly sincere).
"No elected official in the United States is known to endorse range voting." Is this sentence neutral and/or relevant? True though it may be, it seems loaded... What does it add to the article? If it's adding something, could it be put in better context? FleckerMan ( talk) 04:29, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
With range voting, is it permissible to leave some of the numbers out?
Say allocate a (4) and a (1) and leave the others as (0) and (0).
In this example of range voting, the weights go 4-3-2-1.
If Formula One races, they give the winner an extra weight, something like 8-4-2-1.
Who choses what weights to give?
Syd1435 05:56, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)
It is up to the voter within the bounds set by the rules. -- Henrygb 18:10, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Range Voting is ratings. The rating you give to one candidate do not constrict your freedom in rating another. A voting method where the voter is forced to give a descending number of points is called Borda count. The restriction with descending numbers was made to prevent voting in extremes but it brings new problems. The Borda count is generally not called a version of Range Voting. 84.144.91.50 08:51, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
The article currently states
However, I don't agree with this. Suppose there are three candidates and you are voting within the range [0, 1], which you would like to give votes of 0, 1/2, and 1, in order. Then the article would suggest that one of the following four voting patterns is optimal, but I wish to show that none of them are:
Anyone agree or disagree?
While calculating the average fails the Majority Criterion I don't see how using the median could fail that. If the highest median is shared by several candidates one could fall back to the average as a tiebraker. Does this introduce new bugs? 84.144.91.50 12:58, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
One implementation of median ratings is Majority Choice Approval. Disadvantages of this are, for instance, the failure of Participation and consistency. KVenzke 15:19, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
D'oh. I already read the MCA article. Thanks for the fast answer. I also read about that version of MCA where the voter can use a ABCDF rating where A,B,C are calculated as the same, so it is merely an expression without having an effect on who the winner is (however, it could be used for having an effect on the winner's salary or suspending him from running for office in two consecutive rounds). But my above description of using the median could be used for any range while avoiding that. Does it introduce new bugs in relation to MCA then? (Maybe this belongs to the MCA discussion) 84.144.91.50 19:31, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with an MCA variant in which some slots are functionally identical to others. I don't think using the average to break median ratings ties creates problems, but it might be more attractive to break the tie based on which candidate comes closer to having a higher median. KVenzke 20:09, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
I had to cut a lot of recent material for being original research, POV, not notable, not cited, and/or incorrect. I'm open to discussing it. KVenzke 05:03, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
Votes | Probabilities | Utility | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
X | Y | Z | X | Y | Z | Exact | Approx |
1 | 0 | 0 | 27/40 | 13/80 | 13/80 | 121/160 | 0.75625 |
1 | 1/4 | 0 | 320537/491520 | 53179/245760 | 12925/98304 | 31143/40960 | 0.760327 |
1 | 1/2 | 0 | 953/1536 | 205/768 | 173/1536 | 193/256 | 0.753906 |
1 | 3/4 | 0 | 18319/32768 | 27753/81920 | 16739/163840 | 29837/40960 | 0.728442 |
1 | 1 | 0 | 109/240 | 109/240 | 11/120 | 109/160 | 0.68125 |
Response to KVenzke 03:29, 17 September 2005 (UTC) by Boris Alexeev 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
For simplicity, I'm writing with zero indentation.
At this point, I don't think there's any chance that either of us will change our opinion. I think it's a shame that there is an article on Wikipedia that I believe could be better, but that's just too bad. I will answer one or two of your points, as well as suggest changes, so as to complete the discussion.
Responses
I'm actually unconvinced of the fact that in certain, reasonable models with many people, the same thing doesn't happen. I may do some analysis myself to determine the optimal vote in certain situations, although only because I am interested and not for this article. Unfortunately, your statement is not "provable".
I'd venture to say that using intermediate votes is helpful when either there are a small number of voters, or you have good information. As for why "in general" is confusing, see Mathematical jargon:
I think the quote speaks for itself, but in short, I interpreted "in general" to mean "always". See below.
In my example, I assume the other voters are voting randomly. It's hard to have less information about the other voters. Indeed, if I actually knew how they were voting, I would simply vote as in approval and make sure that the best candidate that I can make win does win.
Suggested changes
For the reason described above, the phrase "in general" can be misleading. I suggest changing it to "in most cases" as well as an explanation of where this statement is supposedly true, e.g.:
My purpose in suggesting this change is four-fold: (0) to finish this discussion and compromise, (1) to clear up what the article says, (2) state everything that is "known" about the topic, and (3) make the article applicable even in cases with small population. I think range voting can be very useful in small committees (indeed, I use it myself), and is not only applicable to public elections. Of course, feel free to reword.
Boris Alexeev 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I call b.s. on this passage, and I'm going to remove it:
There are several things wrong here:
-- RobLa 18:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
It is enormously controversial to claim that any voting system is exempted from Arrow's theorem. For example, first past the post clearly isn't exempted, yet isn't a ranked system. In particular, my complaint is about this paragraph:
I've been asking around about this page, (see Talk:Social Choice and Individual Values) and it was pointed out that this claim isn't cited. I'm removing the paragraph, and asking that a source be cited before reinserting it. -- RobLa 18:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
If a candidate is rated more highly than another candidate, then the other must be rated lower. Given ballots with scores ranging from 0 to 1, candidate A on a ballot with score 1.0, B with a score less than 1.0, and C with a score lower than B, changing the ballot to express C has a higher utility than A requires reducing the scores for A and B. If B keeps the same relative utility as A, then the score for B will reduce less than the score for A. C goes on to lose (irrelevant alternative, as C's entire score may be 1.0, with all other voters rating C as 0), and A's slim margin is smaller than the absolute change of the difference between A and B, and so the winner moves from A to B. By the same token, we can say that this is the voter's *natural* ballot, and that the existence of C caused B to win rather than A. It is not possible to argue that A, B, and C are not scored independently here, as there is no meaning to any score assigned to any candidate except in relation to the other candidates: independent scoring can only mean the candidate with the greatest utility is given the greatest possible score, and all other candidates are examined in proportion to that candidate but not in regards to preference for that candidate or others, as there is no absolute basis for any score given to any candidate (i.e. this definition of "independent" is the only one that isn't absurd because utility is dimensionless and there would be no frame of reference to score a candidate's utility except against some conceptual maximum). Much of the article is based on the non-peer-reviewed writings of advocates, although some is using shoddy published research (Baujard seriously?), so the article is highly-questionable, may be subject to the balance fallacy (score voting is the social choice theory equivalent of climate change denial), and might fail NPOV by way of being largely supported by citing two non-peer-reviewed advocacy organizations run by the same people. John Moser ( talk) 15:47, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I added some wording indicating that this system is not actually in current use "for single seat election", "political elections", etc. Also, especially in the "Properties" section, the writing seems to be getting fairly close to WP:NOR - it is not a "Condorcet method" to "many people", but "Center for Range Voting" has improved the relevant definitions to show that it is. Given that the Center appears to be primarily Warren Smith, who is the key person behind this conception of Range Voting, most non-voting-system-wonk readers such as myself can't help but feeling the article may not be properly neutral. Is Range Voting studied more widely under other terms, or has Dr. Smith's work been taken up elsewhere. There are no independent references. - David Oberst 03:06, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Someone with a dial-up internet connection who has not registered as a user continues to make changes to article content without discussion or citation. I am reverting these changes. -- Fahrenheit451 22:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Here is an example of this anonymous user's editing and use of personal attacks. From history log: "14:02, 9 March 2007 71.252.98.213 (Talk) (←Undid revision 113762512 by Fahrenheit451 (talk)This does not need discussion. Fahrenheit451 is a hack)"-- Fahrenheit451 14:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
On the substance, this is is one phrase that the anonymous user is inserting:
Range voting in which only two different votes may be submitted (0 and 1, for example) is equivalent to approval voting. As with approval voting, voters must weigh the adverse impact on their favorite candidate of ranking other candidates highly. It shares with approval voting failure to meet the majority criterion or the later-no-harm criterion.
The last sentence is this user's insertion. It is a redundancy. The paragraph is noting that Range with only two options is "equivalent" to Approval. Actually, it *is* Approval. Thus the comment that "it" -- i.e., Approval, shares with Approval [characteristics] is a tautology. If any additional comment is needed on the Properties of Range, it should be in the Properties section.
In particular, the term "failure," while used technically by election methods writers, is a loaded word. It is not a "failure," in more common language, of Range and Approval to not satisfy the Majority Criterion, rather, it would be quite equivalent to say that the Majority Criterion will, under some circumstances, require a clearly inferior election result that Approval and Range would rectify. Abd 05:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
There is an open issue as to whether Range voting satisfies majority criterion. In reading the Majority criterion wiki entry, it appears to me that range voting does not satisfy it. Let me try to prove that by contrary example:
Consider this case:
Three candidates X, Y, and Z. Three voters Able, Baker, Charlie.
They vote as follows (scale is 1 to 100):
Able: X: 3 of 100 Y: 2 of 100 Z: 1 of 100 Baker: X: 3 of 100 Y: 2 of 100 Z: 1 of 100 Charlie: X: 1 of 100 Y: 100 of 100 Z: 1 of 100
As I am reading the range voting definition, candidate Y wins while a majority (Able and Baker) range candidate X as their first choice. If my analysis is true, then I contend that it is accurate to state that range voting does not strictly satisfy the majority criterion. QED.
Is my thinking correct? Thanks. WilliamKF 23:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Formula would be: f(vote) = (vote - voter's low vote) * (high possible vote - low possible vote) / (voter's high - voter's low vote) + low possible vote.
So for Able, their low vote was 1, their high vote was 3, their high possible vote (same for all voters) is 100, their low possible vote (same for all voters) is 1. f(3) => 100 f(2) => 50.5 f(1) => 1.
Able: X: 3 => 100 of 100 Y: 2 => 50.5 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100 Baker: X: 3 => 100 of 100 Y: 2 => 50.5 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100 Charlie: X: 1 => 1 of 100 Y: 100 => 100 of 100 Z: 1 => 1 of 100
Now this makes the analysis more complicated. Can anyone create an example which violates majority criterion or later-no-harm criterion using this change? If not, the question becomes whether my tweak is part of the official definition for range voting or not. WilliamKF 00:25, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
William, I think you have solved a problem. The majority criterion is defined in terms of ranked systems, not rated, the latter of which Range is. You have essentially fixed the definition to encompass range voting.-- Fahrenheit451 05:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Nonsense. E.g.
Candidates A B C Daisy 10 9 0 Alice 10 9 0 Janet 1 10 0
Candidate B wins by a landslide, even though the votes are already scaled.
1) Having the majority win makes little sense, compared to having the winner who produces the greatest social utility. That is, it's not a problem if a voting method sometimes fails to elect the Condorcet winner (when there even is one); what matters is the average satisfaction of the electorate with the result. That's expected value. Any voter with an ounce of economics knowledge wants the highest expected value from a transaction. 2) With 5 candidates in a race, there is a 25% chance that no Condorcet winner even exists. With 10 candidates in the race, the odds are 50/50. Worrying about picking a Condorcet winner is therefore often entirely a moot point. 3) Range Voting elects the Condorcet winner (when one exists) more often than plurality any situation, and under some plausible assumptions of voter behavior may actually be a better Condorcet method than real Condorcet methods. -- BROKEN LADDER
The problem is that no voting system can satisfy the Majority Criterion if the Majority does not vote their *strict* preference. The Criterion was not designed to allow "weak votes." Range allows weak votes. These votes can be considered as partial abstentions. In an example above, a vote of 1, 2, and 3, on a scale of 100, was considered an expression of preference by members of a "majority." In fact, these votes indicate serious dislike of all those candidates. Technically, though, they are "preferences." Yet they are seriously weak ones. Ranked methods treat preferences as absolute, and know nothing of weak votes. Consider it this way: a majority may have a preference, but is this preference guaranteed to win -- with any system -- if the majority abstains from voting? One way of looking at range is that each voter has N votes to cast, and may cast as many as they wish for any given candidate. (In other words, it is Approval voting with 100 votes instead of the normal one.)
If the majority have a preference, as shown in weak votes, these votes may be considered as partial abstentions. As if, in the first example above, 97% of that majority stayed home. So, for starters, it is appropriate to consider normalization in applying the Majority Criterion to Range. However, Range still can fail to elect the preference of a fully-voting majority. This happens when the majority also gives votes to another candidate. By doing this, again, the majority is effectively abstaining -- to a degree -- from that pairwise election. And thus, again, the first preference of a majority can fail to win.
Generally, as the Majority Criterion is usually stated and interpreted, it must be said that Range does not satisfy it. However, it only "fails" when the Majority, to some degree or other, *consents* to this by allowing votes to other candidates. The objection Range advocates have is to the loaded use, in articles for the general public, if the term "fail," even though it is technically correct.
The Majority Criterion was designed for ranked methods, and Range is not a ranked method, though one can infer rankings from a Range ballot. Some have proposed a revised Majority Criterion which requires the majority to vote strict preference to guarantee victory for the majority preference. It is the freedom that Range grants to the voter to vote weak preference that creates the ambiguity.
Under Range, the majority has the power to elect its preference. It may choose not to exercise this power. Under Approval, as an example, there may be a candidate preferred by the majority, but if the majority also votes to approve another candidate, that candidate may not win. In this case the permission that the majority has given is quite explicit. They, supposedly, had a preference but they did not use the means that the method provided to express it, which in Approval is to bullet vote. The same is true in Range.
What if, under standard Plurality, the majority were to vote for two candidates? The result would be that the ballots would be thrown out. Under Approval, the effect on the pairwise election between those two candidates is the same. Voting for more than one is abstaining from the pairwise elections between those approved and participating in every other pairwise election. And Range allows intermediate votes.
Really, the first question to address is the much simpler one: does Approval satisfy the Majority Criterion?
If the majority is not aware that it is a majority, it might prefer a candidate but act in such a manner as to elect another candidate. It can do the same under Plurality. We understand that Plurality satisfies the Majority Criterion because, we think, the majority can simply vote for its preference and it will win. However, Approval and Range allow exactly the same voting. If a majority knows that it is a majority (or close to a majority), it is easy for that majority to vote to win its preference under Approval. But what if it does not know? So it hedges its bets -- under Approval it approves additional candidates. Under Plurality, it might vote, instead of for its preference, for another candidate which it imagines is one of the top two. Under Range, it ranks some other candidates than its preference above zero. It is putting some of its weight behind these others. And if others do not support its preference and enough of them do support a candidate which the majority has made room for through its support, again, the first preference of the majority can win. With Approval it is very clear what is going on.
It is ironic that Plurality is universally considered to satisfy the Majority Criterion when it has a *worse* problem with majority preference, which is only not considered because normally the majority is aware of its power. Yet a majority aware of its power and which chooses to use it can prevail under Approval and Range quite the same as under Plurality. Abd 19:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe that there is a mathematical proof that in any election with more than two candidates, it is impossible to come up with a fair voting system. If anyone can find this in the literature, I think it would be useful to cite. Given there is no such thing as a perfect voting scheme when there are more than two choices, the task them becomes trying to find one that is a good compromise. WilliamKF 21:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there is some esoteric voting method criteria, like later-no-harm, which could be listed, but majority criterion is well-known as accepted as a legitimate criterion.-- Fahrenheit451 02:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
The article says that range voting is a system "for one-seat elections." I disagree, because range voting ranks all candidates, the very same ballot could be used in a multi-seat election. The top n ranked candidates would win seats. Am I missing something? maxsch 21:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are missing something. It's easiest to see with Approval, the simplest Range method.
Using a "top n" method for assigning seats would suffer from the same problem as Plurality methods that allow voters n votes. Essentially, the majority can get all the seats! This is why STV methods reweights votes as seats are created, and the multiwinner form of Range Voting, Reweighted Range Voting (RRV) does the same thing. The details are complex, but the basic idea, as an example, is that the votes of someone whose top ranked candidate is elected are then devalued, since they got a representative. RRV is more complicated than that, but it's the same idea.
STV is quite a good multiwinner method, but always is vulnerable to breakdown at the end of the process when actual eliminations start. RRV avoids that. No candidates are eliminated, but winners are declared one at a time until the n seats have been filled. Each time a winner is declared, ballots with votes for that candidate are reweighted. There is a form of Approval voting which can be used similarly, but there is a zealous article deleter, Special:Contributions/Yellowbeard, who has been going about getting election methods articles killed, and the article on it was killed Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Proportional_approval_voting. Apparently not enough of the Voting Methods people are watching for this. We could get it back, if we want. But I can't do everything! (The vote was three to two for delete. Normally, that might not be enough to result in a delete, but it's up to the administrator who decides to take action, and apparently the administrator in question preferred the arguments of Yellowbeard and the other two. Yellowbeard has proposed the deletion of many election methods articles, some of them were actually significant, and this one was cited in many other articles -- so he went around deleting all the references.... which does make sense if the article is inappropriate.)
Abd 14:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I just wrote a comment on the talk page for Bucklin voting that brought up a problem with the voting example used on this page. We have:
Suppose that voters each decided to grant from 1 to 10 points to each city such that their most liked choice got 10 points, and least liked choice got 1 point, with the intermediate choices getting 5 points and 2 points.
This is actually quite unlikely as a voting pattern. Range works best when votes are proportional to voter utilities, and a Memphis voter has a *far* higher utility for a Memphis capital than for a Nashville one. It is more or less traditional, another small problem, to have the minimum vote in Range be zero, not one, and that is what I'll do here. (My apologies for the very rough formatting, I really should use a table, but this is Talk....
Memphis wins. This is actually the best result, probably! Essentially, it would save the most gas and citizen travel time. But in a real election, we would be much more likely to see Memphis bullet vote, likewise Nashville, and Chattanooga and Knoxville voters would give 10s to Nashville as well as to their own cities; indeed, the latter would probably give 10s to three cities. Essentially, Range reduces to Approval under certain conditions, and this election is one of them; standard Approval strategy is to pick the two front-runners and place the approval cutoff between them. With this strategy, Nashville wins, and the Memphis voters can't really do anything about it; attempts by Knoxville and Chattanooga voters to vote otherwise could lead to Memphis winning, a poor outcome for them.
(In a just system, the capital would probably be Memphis and certain tax or other advantages would be given, in exchange, to citizens in the other cities to compensate them for the increased travel time. I know of one national organization which has its annual conference every year in the same city. Unjust? No. They have a travel equalization fund, and all delegates pay the same amount to that fund, which then pays the travel expenses for all delegates. So the same travel expenses are paid by all delegates. by having a single city every year, the work of setting up the conference is minimized, and it is also convenient to the national office.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd ( talk • contribs) 04:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
There is a POV tag on this article, placed by StrengthOfNations probably as an outcome of discussions at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Range_voting, which had been started by that editor. However, the problem with the article is not a POV problem, necessarily, but the use of sources not acceptable (or at least not fully acceptable) under Wikipedia policies, see WP:SOURCE. This is not a POV dispute, which is a content dispute, and no significant content dispute is apparent from Talk, nor is there any edit war going on. In other words, if an editor disputes content here, the editor is free to fix it instead of placing a POV tag, which should be connected with either a specific dispute -- which should be discussed here for resolution -- or a general characterization of the article as being unbalanced, which, again, should be discussed here so that the nature of the dispute is clear and likewise the remedy.
As an example of a *general* POV dispute, see Instant-runoff voting. The tag there was placed by a user not specifically involved in a content dispute, and specific problems were not asserted as part of the placing of the tag, but, the difference is, editors did confirm the reasonableness of the tag placement, and continue, there, to discuss and negotiate, either directly in Talk or indirectly through a series of edits, the remedy to both specific problems with the article and the overall balance problem. It's a process that takes time.
However, here, there has been no assertion of specific POV problems. I could agree that there is an overall balance problem, but the solution to that *in the absence of specific problems* would be to begin to add balancing material. Given that no attempt to do that has appeared either from the editor placing the tag or anyone else, I plan to remove the tag. *However*, any editor is free to put it back, and, if this is accompanied by any sign of an intention to act to remedy either specific problems or an overall balance problem, I would not contest this. I'm only contesting a general placement with no assertion of specific problems and no participation in remedying either them or a general imbalance problem. In that case, it is merely a drive-by shooting, which we must always meet with quick protection of the victim, first, and resolution of any legitimate dispute, later.
In my decision on this, I have also considered the likelihood that StrengthOfNations is a sock puppet or straw puppet (see WP:SOCK), which is reasonably clear to me from Special:Contributions/StrengthOfNations. Because I consider it largely a waste of time to try to *prove* this, at this point, I have not filed the suspicion or a checkuser request, and this consideration alone cannot be used as a counterargument to any edit. Sock puppet contributions, in my opinion, are only to be disregarded, in terms of judging the balance of opinion or the disregard and reversion of clearly meritless edits. Sock puppets may often make good contributions, which is why there is no automated process to remove reversible edits merely on the basis that the user was found to be a sock, and all editors, including suspected sock puppets, have the right of WP:AGF.
In any case, if any editor doesn't like my removal of the POV tag, please, justify its replacement here, preferably with examples of what is wrong with the article, aside from the obvious need for better sourcing, and put it back! (Lots of articles have poor sourcing and are still NPOV, because what is not sourced is still either generally accepted as true or is properly attributed as an opinion.) -- Abd ( talk) 02:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
(I believe that this section refers to Warren D Smith's article here. Homunq ( talk) 16:41, 10 June 2009 (UTC))
Hi, this is James Green-Armytage, and I just read this article for the first time. I'm glad that it wasn't deleted, because I think that this is a theoretically important voting system. Anyway, one thing that struck me when reading the article is that the "empirical tests" section might be considered original research. On the other hand, I find WS's study to be interesting, and think that it should at least get an external link, if not a section in the article. Has this already been discussed?
Also, on first my first skim through the article, I'm not finding a section pointing out the fact that "utility" is a theoretical phenomenon that cannot be measured (i.e. placed on a scale allowing interpersonal comparison). As far as I can tell, the same would apply to "Bayesian regret", but I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with that idea. -- Hermitage ( talk) 22:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Here's my point of view on the whole OR issue here:
-The mathematical / monte-carlo experimental paper which these results derive from, although it is not peer-reviewed and published, is far, far more of an RS than the 4 links to CRV screeds by the same author which are currently in the footnotes. (No offense with the word "screed" - I just mean that it's written for advocacy, the same author is also capable of writing academically)
-What the paper actually "proves" is best case (no strategic voting) and some near-worst cases (maximal strategic voting) for each system. It makes no attempt to address the issue of how prevalent strategy would be under each system, nor does it consider the more-pathological cases of biased strategy (one interest group more likely to use strategy than others) or uninformed voters. As such, it cannot give an expected bayesian regret value for any system; all it can do is establish an upper bound and a (debatable) lower bound on that value for each system. Thus, the paper's own conclusion that Range voting is superior to all others for both best and worst cases is misleading, because Range in practice could lead to more prevalent (though less extreme) strategic voting and thus a worse result than, say, Condorcet.
-(Here's where my own OR comes in) More solid conclusions would be that, measuring by Bayesian regret, Range is superior to all others in the absence of strategic voting; and that Range (along with the Approval special case) are the only systems which are always superior to Plurality despite any uniform amount of strategic voting.
-Another conclusion, which does not relate to Range, is that Condorcet is superior to IRV at any given level of strategy. We can use the "any given level of strategy" comparison between Condorcet and IRV, unlike between Range and IRV/Condorcet, since the motivations and kinds of strategy are more comparable, and in fact the consensus is that IRV promotes more strategy than Condorcet.
(If you think from the above that I favor Condorcet over Range, you're wrong. I favor Range, but I regard it as an open question, and above I'm simply arguing from the clear evidence. The questions which are NOT open IMO are: [Range, Condorcet, IRV] are all superior theoretically to [Plurality, Borda]; [Range, Condorcet] are theoretically superior to IRV; IRV has more of a real-world track record and social movement behind it than [Range, Condorcet]; and silly partisanship on this issue stands in the way of progress.)
Homunq ( talk) 16:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
A merge tag has been placed in this article, proposing a merge with Allocation voting. This would be a blatant error: Range and Allocation voting are quite different methods, quite the same as Approval is different from Plurality. Allocation voting *is* similar to (or identical with) Cumulative voting. So, if no objection appears here in short order -- the merge proposer did not start a discussion; the proposer is an obvious sock puppet (see Special:Contributions/Yellowbeard and look at the registration of the account and then the immediate activity) who has been, for a long time, acting to kill voting systems articles (with AfDs and, now, directly) -- I plan to remove the tag. -- Abd ( talk) 19:46, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
This being a clear error and no response, I'm removing the tag. If anyone disagrees, please replace it and discuss here. -- Abd ( talk) 18:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
An editor removed the Category:Positional electoral systems tag from the article, with the summary: "(remove Category:Positional electoral systems, no ranking, no fixed points assigned)." [4]
This is not correct. While Warren Smith has stated that he prefers unlimited resolution Range, which would complicate the issue, but all current proposed and use Range voting systems provide a fixed number of position slots. For example, MSNBC polls taken after early Republican and Democratic candidate debates were what I call Range 3: there were three possible votes: -1, 0, +1. The default vote for each candidate was 0.
A Positional voting system is "a ranked voting method in which the options receive points based on their position on each ballot, and the option with the most points wins." Borda count is a positional system, as is plurality and approval. However, these methods differ, of course, in how the points are assigned, limitations on votes, etc.
Range Voting is precisely equivalent to Borda, except that (1) equal ranking is allowed, (2) some ranks may be empty.
In real Range ballots, there might be, as an example, ten positions for each candidate. As far as the voting equipment is concerned, these are slots, the equivalent of levers on lever machines, or they are bubbles to be filled and counted. Each position produces a particular point for a particular candidate. The meaning of the bubbles on a paper ballot might be points from 0 to 9. The points are summed, and the candidate with the most points wins. This is a positional voting system. I replaced the Category tag. -- Abd ( talk) 00:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
(Now, this seems to conflict with "ranked voting method." Range is a ranked method which allows equal ranking, that's all. However, it is possible that the definition of "positional voting system" requires strict ranking, in which case my argument here would be incorrect, and, contrary to Positional voting system, Approval is not a positional system either. It would take more research than I could do at the moment to confirm either position.) -- Abd ( talk) 00:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
This article states: Guy Ottewell, who coined the term approval voting, now endorses...
The Approval voting article states The system was described in 1976 by Guy Ottewell and also by Robert J. Weber, who coined the term "approval voting."
Who coined the term "approval voting," Guy Ottewell or Robert J. Weber? One of these articles is wrong. Geoffrey.landis ( talk) 03:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there any good way to contact the guy behind RangeVote.net? -- AB ( talk) 22:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
This phrase in the article is quite misleading: " Range voting systems (including Approval voting), unlike any more commonly-used voting systems, give no reason to ever dishonestly rank a less-preferred candidate over a more-preferred one." It doesn't give an incentive to rank a less-preferred candidate OVER a more-prefered one," but it mostly certainly creates an incentive to rank such a candidate EQUALLY in trying to defeat a least-preferred candidate. This would be an ongoing dilemma if this system were ever used.
Note that the main strategic issue would be backers of candidates giving minimal support to other candidates while hoping that less savvy voters will give some degree of support to more than their most preferred candidate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.213.24 ( talk) 16:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
This is an important criterion to measure a voting system. Why edit it out unless this article is just supposed to be a promotional piece.
I removed the advertising copy for the Center for Range Voting and attempted to restore a neutral tone to this section. I wonder though, why is this section here at all? Other Electoral Methods articles do not include an Advocacy section. Links to the advocacy sites are already included as External links, indeed at the top of the list, so all this section really adds to the article is the statement that no elected official endorses this method. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 21:10, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
I've also replaced rangevoting.org as the source for Ottewell's opinion on range voting vs approval voting with Ottewell's own website. Ottewell's statement on range voting on his own site is much milder than the statement provided on rangevoting.org, and the provenance of the more aggressive statement on rangevoting.org isn't clear. Caution with respect to attributed statements dictates using Ottewell's own site as the source. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 21:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
I tagged the statement that the Spartan "shout" is equivalent to range voting as original research. The New York Times article cited to support the statement is about social fragmentation on the Internet. The Spartan "Shout" was introduced as analogous to the deterioration of Internet discussions into name-calling, rants, and flaming, an example of an "impoverished form of democracy." There is no mention of range voting or any other voting system. Though it's a very colorful addition to the article lead, it's inaccurate per its cited source and must go. Yappy2bhere ( talk) 22:00, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
It was discussed in the book Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone. I point this out, because in the article there was a question as to this piece of info's origin. I believe he was quoting someone else also, but I don't remember whom. HighbulpIII ( talk) 08:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm considering moving the article to Score voting; I'll tell you why. The major sources have been shifting to refer to the system this way. Electology does, and now even Rangevoting.org:
Also, perhaps there should be an Etymology section. The lede is heavy with boldface. – RVJ ( talk) 02:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm.... blind google search, 31 million down to 367 finds, a bit more work to figure which matches actually refer to this article subject! Tom Ruen ( talk) 02:33, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. No consensus established. ( closed by non-admin page mover) -- Dane talk 04:54, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Range voting →
Score voting – Agree Electology and rangevoting.org both seem to prefer "score" over "range", and it sounds less like "ranked"
71.167.65.224 (
talk) 00:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. --
Dane
talk
22:13, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Came to suggest the same move. Both https://electology.org and http://rangevoting.org, two of the biggest advocates for this method, now use the primary name "Score Voting", with "Range Voting" as a secondary name. In my dozens of anecdotal experiences explaining this method to a new audience, they often mishear or confuse "Range" for "Ranked" (which many more people are already familiar with). Strongly advocate we rename this page to Score voting to make the distinction more clear. Again, in my anecdotal experience, the name "Score voting" makes sense to a new audience: "you give each of the different options a score". – dsernst ( talk) 15:57, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Actually I found a few references that distinguish between them and listed the variants in Cardinal voting:
See Cardinal voting for references — Omegatron ( talk) 05:39, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
While some of the examples (including the one I just added) are mathematically equivalent to Score, I'm on the fence as to whether they should be here if the ballots don't have actual numbers on them. Maybe those examples should be moved to a Usage section in Cardinal voting? — Omegatron ( talk) 01:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2017.09.006: "Apart from independence, another feature of evaluative voting, also encountered in several political systems, is that voters can express some degree of preference. Three-level grade-voting is possible in Latvia, where voters can cross out, leave as it is, or mark a “plus” for each candidate of her chosen party list"
doi: 10.1177/1465116515580180: "Voters vote for one party list. On her chosen list, a voter can cross out the names of some candidates and give a ‘+’ to others. The score of a candidate is equal to the number of voters who chose the list minus the number of voters who crossed out his name, plus the number of voters who gave him a ‘+’. Within a list, candidates are elected according to their scores."
Latvia_(European_Parliament_constituency)
Is it a stretch to call this score voting, though? — Omegatron ( talk) 01:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Is statutory voting ( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/statutoryvoting.asp, mentioned in https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/cumulative-voting) just a case of score voting, except that each shareholder's ballot is weighted and given a range of allowed values according to the number of shares they have?
If I don't get any objections within some arbitrary timeframe, I plan to add it to the "Non-political use" section.
Solomon Ucko ( talk) 08:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
The excessive use of the "rangevoting.org" page as a source here worries me a bit, since I do not feel like citations to this website on a scientific topic satisfy WP:SCHOLARSHIP, as it is practically just an unreviewed blog-post. I am also not too sure about better citations, though. Jannikp97 ( talk) 01:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)