2018 Washington 10th CD Straw Poll

Counted (which advocates Score voting) held a straw poll in the 10th Congressional District of Washington on June 30, 2018, after giving candidates a chance to speak in front of the voters. 38 people participated, though 4 were rejected as non-eligible voters.

Ballots included three voting systems: Plurality/FPTP, Approval, and Score (0-5), so that voter behavior on the different types of ballots could be compared.

Results

Straw poll results

Under all three voting systems, the Independent Progressive candidate won by a large margin, and the Republican candidate came in last. The Democrat came in 2nd place under FPTP, but under Approval and Score, the Independent Centrist took 2nd place, beating the Democrat. (This was attributed to vote-splitting between the two independents in the plurality election.)

Raw scores for the 34 eligible voters:

	Party	Approval	Score	Plurality
Tamborine Borrelli	Independent Progressive	29	140	26
Nancy Dailey Slotnick	Independent Centrist	12	67	2
Denny Heck	Democrat	8	58	6
Joseph Brumbles	Republican	1	18	0

Analysis

They published analyses of voter behavior:

• Bullet voting and anti-bullet voting
• Min/Max voting and use of Score's expressiveness
• Subjectivity of scales and approval thresholds

Summary of voter behavior:

• 11% of voters bullet voted (giving the maximum score to one candidate and minimum or blanks to the others).
• 0% of voters anti-voted (giving the minimum score to one candidate and maximum scores to the others).
• 0% of voters min/max voted (approval-style votes, where all candidates get either maximum or minimum scores).
• 42% of voters did not use the full range of scores available.
• Voters did not have the same approval thresholds when converting their score ballots to approval ballots (even with the same score ballots).

One voter remarked “It looks like score voting is going to work out much better”.