Voting machines and Range Voting (Executive summary)
Range Voting
(and Approval Voting) can be run on any voting machine in the USA (even
though
those machines were intended for plurality voting)
without modification needed – simply by using those machines in a new way.
Try our demo election
or (same election on another class of machines)
other demo.
Mathematically, what is going on is a transformation
of one C-candidate (0-9 plus X) range voting election
to 11C artificial "plurality elections." In some cases, this is easy and convenient from
the viewpoint of voters (optical scan machines) in others it is less convenient (which is
why we would prefer to have purpose-designed range-voting machines) – but it
always works, easing transition worries greatly.
The overvote (and undervote) detection and rejection
features of plurality machines will detect illegal range votes
(and unintended blanks).
But Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and Condorcet systems cannot be
run on
numerous kinds of voting machines currently used in the USA.
This makes range voting comparatively painless to adopt (and for less pain still,
try approval, which is a simpler but less-good form of range voting).