>Dear Warren,
>Is there any axiomatic characterization of range voting?
>Thanks,
>Joseph Malkevitch  Department of Mathematics
>York College (CUNY)  Jamaica, New York 11451

Yes, there is an axiomatic characterization.
See my (admittedly perhaps rather badly written...
am planning to rewrite & update...) paper "range voting"
  http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html #56

Basically I define a large class of systems called COAF systems,
("COmpact Additive Fair")  and (informally speaking) 
range voting is the only COAF system which allows voters to
be maximally expressive without being strategically stupid.

-wds