An idea I had for a voting system

[Associate Justice PiT]

     That's called approval voting. It definitely has its merits, though I think range voting (where you rate each candidate from 0 to 100) would be preferable.

[Associate Justice PiT]

That's called approval voting. It definitely has its merits, though I think range voting (where you rate each candidate from 0 to 100) would be preferable.

Eh - sounds like it would be too subjective and emotional, too complicated, and far too susceptible to tactical voting.

     How would it be any more susceptible to tactical voting than approval voting? It's basically the same thing only with options for opinions between full approve & full disapprove.

[Associate Justice PiT]

How would it be any more susceptible to tactical voting than approval voting? It's basically the same thing only with options for opinions between full approve & full disapprove.

If people give their chosen candidate 100% and every other candidate 0%, which violates the spirit of the idea (that people honestly give their appraisal of each candidate). The idea behind approval voting is not hurt as much by such tactical voting, since it's an up/down approve/don't approve thing, rather than asking people how much they approve of each candidate. Plus, people will feel significant pressure to vote tactically (for example, if I only agree with John Kerry 70%, but he's my most preferred candidate, I'll rate him 100%, not 70%).

     I suppose there is a point to be had that it would be needlessly more complicated than approval voting when they would probably be about the same in practice.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     That's called approval voting. It definitely has its merits, though I think range voting (where you rate each candidate from 0 to 100) would be preferable.

If you want a ranking system not susceptible to abuse, you'd want something like Condorcet.

     Condorcet would probably be ideal in the United States, actually, due to the lack of a centrist party to make it boring.