The problem with approval voting is that it does not give voters a mechanism by which to indicate partial approval. If there is a centrist candidate which many voters only slightly support, there would still be a media horse race over whether or not voters will interpret partial approval to mean 'do not approve' or 'approve' on election day, with a final result that may be unnecessarily surprising to participants. There are also examples on the wikipedia page of some organizations trying range-2 approval voting and abandoning it.
Range-3 seems like the minimum range desirable. It would allow voters to indicate whether they disapprove, were neutral toward, or approve of a candidate. The only historical adoption of range-3 I am aware of is the electoral council of the Republic of Venice, and I believed they used it as a constant component in their electoral process for selecting the Doge without abandoning it.
The costs of switching to something even better like range-5 may also be over-estimated. Range-5 seems like it would work with existing optical scan ballots. The cost of acquisition for range voting tabulatation code on the state level would also ideally be fairly low due to the simplicity of the preference aggregation method in range voting in comparison to IRV, and Maine is already undertaking a switch to the later.
It doesn't really matter, it still does vastly better than plurality voting. I tried simulations where every individual automatically approved of the top 50% of candidates. It still got good results. Similar if everyone voted for the top 30% of candidates they liked, or any other arbitrary percentage.
Using more ranges is silly. There's no reason to ever give a candidate less than maximum vote, if you want to give them a chance at winning. If you don't, then there's no reason to give them anything above 0.
More range -> greater expressivity -> better voting system
There is no reason to give your favorite candidate less than max score, and no reason to give your least favorite candidate more than 0 score, but the middle does serve a purpose. Scoring other candidates in the middle is to boost their chances of winning against your less-favored candidates at the cost of boosting their chances of winning against your more-favored candidates.
There are some variants, such as Range2Runoff, which beats Range often in simulations. I hear that it is much better than pure Range when there are many strategic voters.
Have you ever noticed how star rating systems are completely useless? People either rate 5 stars or 1 star, and very rarely in between. Most places have switched to simple like/dislike based systems. E.g. reddit or youtube.
And that's when people have no incentive to lie...
Score ratings are not as useful when the scales are poorly defined, as many internet scoring systems are. Many internet scoring systems want you to measure quality to some universal standard that should apply to all things past and present in the same way. A range voting election asks you to measure quality relative only to the options you are presented with.
Here's a hypothetical example involving 3 different shampoos. All 3 work. One smells bad. One smells decent. One smells great.
If I were to review these on Amazon, I would likely give them 3, 4, 5 stars respectively. All 3 of them worked, but I have a preference. I could imagine a theoretically worse shampoo that didn't work, or even worse, made all my hair fall out. Such a shampoo would be worth a rating of 0 stars. I don't give my least favorite shampoo I actually used 0 stars because I can imagine that in the future I may come across something worse, and it doesn't seem correct to put a functional product on the same level as a harmful one.
If I were to vote (using a score system) for which one of these 3 shampoos I would like my workplace to stock, then it is much simpler. 0, 2, 5 stars for each option, respectively. I don't have to worry about a hypothetical worse 4th option in the future skewing my results now. If a future election is held with that worse, 4th option, then I can give it a 0 and adjust my previous 0 and 2 star ratings accordingly.
Like I said, I would love score voting (range voting). Its my preference for precisely the reason you state: it provides the expressiveness to show partial support. And it does so without the constraints of IRV or ranked voting. To my mind, score is the "superset" voting model.
However, approval is something that could be installed with relatively low cost and low effort. And it is nearly immediately understood by anyone. Score voting requires a tiny bit more education (although it too is easy to understand; and I suspect most voters would get the hang of it after a couple elections).
I would be disappointed with IRV/ranked because it seems the most difficult to understand, requires rework of ballots, and disallows equal scoring (thereby reducing expressiveness). It would be a shame to squander voting reform momentum to end up with IRV.
> It would be a shame to squander voting reform momentum to end up with IRV.
I feel an incredible sense of urgency about this, but am not sure how to go about acting on it. It's hard to convince people that this is part of the root of the problem. Most folks I talk to see the voting system as some kind of technicality, and don't understand that it's actually on a foundational level.
It seems like range/score voting could use a big marketing and education overhaul. Fairvote is not helping the situation.
Range-3 seems like the minimum range desirable. It would allow voters to indicate whether they disapprove, were neutral toward, or approve of a candidate. The only historical adoption of range-3 I am aware of is the electoral council of the Republic of Venice, and I believed they used it as a constant component in their electoral process for selecting the Doge without abandoning it.
The costs of switching to something even better like range-5 may also be over-estimated. Range-5 seems like it would work with existing optical scan ballots. The cost of acquisition for range voting tabulatation code on the state level would also ideally be fairly low due to the simplicity of the preference aggregation method in range voting in comparison to IRV, and Maine is already undertaking a switch to the later.