Cardinal voting systems: Difference between revisions

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=== Approval rating ===

The concept of an approval rating, sometimes just called approval, is often used to count the vote/score totals for each candidate. When the score scale being used only allows for nonnegative scores, then a candidate's approval rating is just the percentage of their number of votes/points divided by the maximally attainable votes/score any candidate can get. The maximally attainable votes/score is whatever total votes/score a candidate would get if all voters theoretically gave them the maximal support/score. So for example, if every voter gives a candidate a 5 on a scale from 0 to 10, they'd have a 50% approval rating. The notion of an approval rating makes it easier to see the connection between the vote/score totals in different rated methods, such as [[Approval voting]] and [[Score voting]], and with different score scales.

=== Normalization ===

Normalization refers to, on a rated ballot with more than two allowed scores, when a voter's ballot is modified such that the candidate they originally scored highest is given the highest allowed score, the candidate they originally scored lowest is given the lowest allowed score, and all other candidates's scores are kept in between so as to maintain the ratio of scores between each pair of candidates' scores (as best as possible). For example, on a scale from 0 to 5, with three candidates A, B, and C, if the voter scored them as A:3 B:2 C:1, then their normalized ballot would be A:5 B:3 (or B:4; technically it should be B:3.333, but that might not be allowed), and C:0.

It is argued that most voters in elections using rated ballots would normalize their ballots, as this maximizes their voting power in that election. This is in part because it maximizes their support for their favorite candidates and minimizes their support for their least favorite candidate. An argument to the contrary is that if, say, a voter hates all of the candidates but has only a slight preference for one of them, then giving full support to that candidate sends a signal that the candidate need not improve themselves in order to get more support from the voter, whereas giving that candidate a low score pressures them to do better in the future. In addition, voters with weak preferences who don't wish to overrule other voters who may have stronger preferences are unlikely to normalize, as in a ranked method they would often either not vote or rank many candidates equal to each other.

Normalization can also more broadly refer to when a voter's rated ballot is adjusted to fit between any two scores i.e. if the highest score a voter gave anyone was a 3 out of 5, then in some situations, it is desirable to ensure that after normalization, the voter's highest score given to any candidate will still be a 3 out of 5. This can be the case when a voter does not want to use all of their voting power.

[[Category:Cardinal voting methods]]

[[Category:Ballot type]]