SuperCitizen
civic os · v1.0

Score voting (sometimes called range voting) lets voters rate every candidate on a fixed scale, rather than ranking them or picking one. Variants include STAR voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff), used in some local Oregon races, and approval voting, where voters simply mark every candidate they "approve" of.

Advocates argue cardinal methods better capture intensity of preference, eliminate spoiler effects without RCV's monotonicity edge cases, and are simple to tabulate at the precinct level. Critics note that score voting is vulnerable to "min-max" strategic voting (giving max score to your favorite and min to all others), and that voters tend to bullet-vote in practice anyway.

Score voting and approval voting have a small but growing footprint in the U.S. — primarily in nonpartisan municipal elections and party primaries.

Spectrum of framings

How adherents on each side of the conventional left / center / right spectrum frame this issue — written so each camp would recognize the framing as charitable.

left

Some reformers see score voting as a more honest aggregation of preferences than RCV, especially in multi-candidate fields.

center

Election scientists note score voting passes more axiomatic fairness criteria than plurality or RCV, but adoption is rare.

right

Some libertarians favor approval voting as a low-cost reform that doesn't require new tabulation hardware.

Perspectives

Each perspective is presented in terms its advocates would recognize, with the concerns they treat as paramount. None is endorsed.

  • Cardinal-method reformers

    Score and approval voting avoid RCV's edge cases (non-monotonicity, ballot exhaustion) and let voters express degrees of preference. Tabulation is precinct-level and transparent.

    • Monotonicity and other voting-theory criteria
    • Tabulation simplicity and auditability
    • Reducing the spoiler effect
  • Skeptics

    Score voting incentivizes strategic min-max voting, collapsing it to approval voting in practice. The added scale doesn't deliver promised expressiveness.

    • Strategic voting under cardinal methods
    • Voter understanding of scoring scales
    • Lack of large-scale empirical evidence

Related lessons

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