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If you were trying to design the worst way to vote, you might:

Force voters to say the least possible amount – name just one candidate, and say nothing about how much you like or dislike any of the others.

possible amount – name just one candidate, and say nothing about how much you like or dislike any of the others. Make it reward voters for not voting for whom they really want.

voters for voting for whom they really want. Make it operate, over time, in such a way as to diminish your number of choices to the minimum – only 2 (or 1, meaning no choice at all).

– only 2 (or 1, meaning no choice at all). Make it easy for fraudsters to invalidate ballots ("overvoting").

Candidate Your Vote EISENHOWER, Dwight D. 60 HARDING, Warren G. 5 RASPUTIN, Grigori 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 score voting machine's display screen.

But wait ! That's our voting system now!

There's a better way: score voting (also known as "range voting").

You've all seen score voting in action as the Olympic scoring system. Judges give the competitors scores and the highest average score wins. Similarly, in a score voting election, voters would give the candidates scores, and the one with the highest average would win.

Score voting permits voters to express their opinions about any number of candidates (not just one). It eliminates the "spoiler," "wasted vote," and "candidate cloning" problems. All candidates compete on a level playing field, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, or other. It's simple enough to run on all of today's voting machines and to be used by kindergarteners.

How score voting works:

Each vote consists of a numerical score within some range (say 0 to 99) for each candidate. Simpler is 0 to 9 ("single digit score voting"). Voters may also indicate "X" or " NO OPINION " if they have no opinion about a candidate. Such votes don't affect that candidate's average. For Andrews 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NO OPINION Benson 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NO OPINION Carey 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NO OPINION Davis 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NO OPINION Elbert 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NO OPINION example, "Andrews=9, Benson=0, Carey=3, Davis=9, Elbert=X" could be your vote in a Score voting election, where 9 indicates best and X indicates " NO OPINION ." The candidate with the highest average score wins... except If desired, the candidates can pre-agree that each is to be awarded T fake votes using score S (for some pre-agreed values of S and T) before the election begins. The highest average based on both the real and fake votes, wins. This is fair since S and T are the same for every candidate. (Why do that?)

CRV's purpose:

To educate the public about the advantages of score voting and comparative disadvantages of other systems (especially the USA's embarrassingly poor current "plurality" system), To lobby for the adoption of score voting. To assist anyone looking to use Score Voting for an election, whether for public office, student elections, or anything else.

But CRV also supports research into (and is open-minded about) all voting systems. Indeed, CRV, for some purposes, even advocates other systems. CRV is nonpartisan.

Learn more: Current missions, longer term strategic plan, and the Iowa 08 project. Visit blog.

How to help: See those buttons up top ↑ marked donate, join, endorse, translate (into other languages), etc? Bingo.