RANGE VOTING selects the winner of an N-candidate election:
(a) Each vote consists of assigning a point value from 0 to 99 to each candidate (for example, 30 points for candidate A, 64 for B etc.) The voter might give her favorite candidate a 99 and her least-favorite zero.
(b) If a voter desires to express no opinion about any particular candidate, she may assign an X instead of a point value, indicating "intentional blank."
(c) A candidate's "total score" is the average of all his non-blank scores (average = sum of points voters cast for that candidate divided by the number of voters who did not vote an X for him).
(d) Candidate with highest average wins.
(e) Candidates with too few non-X votes (even though they might have high scores) are not permitted to win.

Range voting has properties superior to other single-winner voting systems:

1) Simplicity;
2) Encourages voter honesty instead of strategy;
3) Can be done on plurality-type "dumb" voting machines;
4) Unaffected by candidate cloning;
5) Best by test in computer simulation experiments measuring Bayesian regret of different voting systems;
6) Reduces spoiled ballots and 2-party domination.

For more information please go to the Center for Range Voting. This bulletin board is the CRV's communication medium. WARNING: for many purposes, we now are trying to MIGRATE to the election science foundation GoogleGroup instead. (Also try clicking "links" or text-searching our archive.)