Example Simplified Page cf. the Olympics

History's first thoroughly accurate and fair way of measuring an electorate's wishes.
-Guy Ottewell

The Best Thing We Could Do for our Democracy, which would help out with just about any problem with US politics you could possibly think of.
-Wish I'd said that dept. (It was Jameson Quinn, actually)

The right of voting... is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
-Thomas Paine

Imagine if the steering wheel on your car only had two positions: left and right, and that those two positions meant different things at different times. That's what our two-party system is like. We are steering our country with a two-position steering wheel, zig-zagging back and forth recklessly.
-Rob Lanphier

Voting systems are to a democracy what the 'operating system' is to a computer...
-Steven Hill, Fixing Elections, p. ix.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
-Albert Einstein

We didn't have one election for president in 2004. We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.
-Robert Pastor (director of Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University)

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world - indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead

This was NOT a proper math talk. Many in the audience could almost understand it.
-[Univ. of Stockholm official to Kimmo Eriksson]

This is the actual radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. Radio conversation released by chief of naval operations, 10-10-95.
CANADIANS: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
AMERICANS: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.
CANADIANS: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
AMERICANS: This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
CANADIANS: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.
AMERICANS: This is the Aircraft Carrier US LINCOLN, the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied with three Destroyers, three Cruisers and numerous support vessels. I DEMAND that you change your course 15 degrees north. I say again, that's one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
CANADIANS: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Candidate Your Vote EISENHOWER, Dwight D. 60 HARDING, Warren G. 5 HITLER, Adolf 0 HOOVER, Herbert 25 LINCOLN, Abraham 99 PEROT, H. Ross X ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. 50 WASHINGTON, George 75

FIGURE illustrates a hypothetical ballot on a range voting machine's display screen.

Range Voting

aka the score-them-all system or 0-99 voting, to select winner of an election:

1. each vote consists of one numerical score from 0 to 99 awarded to each candidate (for example 57,0,34,99 could be one vote in a 4-candidate election; advise 99/0 for best/worst).
   
2. voters may fill entries with "X" if they desire not to express an opinion about that candidate (e.g. 57,0,X,99) † Only candidates sufficiently known that at least 25M% of their scores are numeric [with all-X ballots disregarded] are allowed to win; where M is the maximum fraction of numeric scores got by anyone in the race.
   
3. The candidate with the highest average numeric score wins.
   

CRV's purpose:

1. To educate the public about the advantages of range voting and comparative disadvantages of other systems (especially the USA's embarrassingly poor current "plurality" system),
2. To lobby for its adoption.
3. But CRV also supports research into (and is open-minded about) all voting systems, and indeed for some purposes even advocates other systems.    CRV is nonpartisan.

Current missions, the longer term strategic plan, and the Iowa 08 project.

Want to subscribe to RangeVoting bulletin board? ( Allows you to post and read and text-search our messages, with optional email auto-delivery to you. Can withdraw at any time. Can then participate in our polls, etc. Joining the BB resembles subscribing to a newspaper in that it does not signify your endorsement of anything. )
Click the above link then "Join" or "New user? Sign up".

Top Ten Virtues of Range Voting

1. EXPRESSIVE: You give information about all candidates not just one, and QUANTITATIVELY – not just who you prefer, but how much.
2. ENCOURAGES HONESTY NOT STRATEGY: Your score for candidate C in no way affects A vs. B battle. So you can give your honest opinion of C without fear of "wasting your vote" or hurting A.
3. Voter never has any incentive to vote someone over ("betray") his/her favorite. (May sound like an obvious and easy criterion, but very few other voting systems obey it!) This should decrease the importance of cash.
4. UNAFFECTED BY CANDIDATE CLONING: If A has "clones" A₂, A₃, that neither hurts nor helps them, unlike in the old "plurality voting" system where the clones "split the vote" and lose; and also unlike "Borda voting" where a party assures victory merely by running enough clones. No more bitter emnity between alike candidates.
5. BREAKS STRANGLEHOLD OF SELF-REINFORCING 2-PARTY DOMINATION SO VOTERS GET MORE CHOICES: Plurality & IRV voting yield 2-party domination. Range voting experimentally yields much greater support for 3rd parties than "approval voting." Having more parties should also decrease the importance of gerrymandering, decrease predictability below 98%, and increase interest & turnout.
6. ANY VOTING MACHINE FOR MULTIPLE PLURALITY CONTESTS, i.e. all extant, can handle range voting. (This for "single digit" range voting i.e. with scores in {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,X}.) IRV and Condorcet voting can't say that.
7. If all voting is strategic, then approximately (a) maximizes number of "PLEASANTLY SURPRISED" voters and (b) ELECTS BEATS-ALL WINNERS whenever they exist.
8. FEWER "SPOILED BALLOTS" and LESS FRAUD. In plurality voting, an accidental hanging chad or overvote can cause your vote to be discarded. With range voting, a hanging chad causes only part of your vote to get discarded (converted to "blank") with the rest – your opinions of all the other candidates – still operational. There's no such thing as an "overvote" since expressing opinions about all candidates is the idea; there's no wrong way to fill in a ballot. RV also reduces risk of TIES.
9. UNIQUELY BEST among all common single-winner election methods as measured by BAYESIAN REGRET. (Holds for all 720 tried combinations of the following: number V of voters and N of candidates with V>N>2, several kinds of "utility generators", several amounts of "voter ignorance," and with either "honest" or "strategic" voters.)
10. HUGE POSITIVE IMPACT: "Democracy" improved over monarchy and feudalism. Bayesian regret measurements say just switching from plurality to range will cause at least as much further regret reduction!
11. HONEYBEES & ANTS have run trillions of elections over the last 20-50 million years to make hive relocation decisions. Under severe evolutionary pressure, they came up with... range voting!