Score Ballot

Key Benefits of Score Voting Methods

Express Yourself

Rate all the candidates instead of ranking just one candidate. Your ballot shows if you prefer candidate A to candidate D, and by how much you prefer A to D.

Civilized Campaigns

Score methods calm campaigns. Voters can punish divisive campaign tactics with low scores. Candidates need high scores from their base while avoiding low scores. Parties have a strong incentive to nominate candidates who can pull this off.

Why Score is more Fair than Choose 1 voting

1 - Safe to Vote for Your Favorite Candidate

With traditional Choose 1 voting, you often must vote for the “lessor of two evils” instead of your favorite candidate. Vote splitting is unfair to you and your favorite candidate. Ranked methods, including traditional Choose 1 voting and Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), are prone to vote splitting and the spoiler effect.

2 - Spoilers are Not a Threat with Score Methods

Major party candidates lose votes to minor candidates with similar platforms. The spoiler effect beat Al Gore in 2000. In 2024, Robert Kennedy posed a threat to Trump and Harris.

3 - Fair to Third Party & Independent Candidates

Because voters fear the spoiler effect, they seldom vote for independent or third-party candidates. Thus, third party support is always under-reported. This harms third party efforts to recruit members, build publicity, raise funds, and win elections. By letting voters to rate all candidates, Score gives third-party and independent candidates a fair chance and a true voice.

4 - Traditional Voting Exaggerates Major Party Support

The votes third parties lose because voters fear the spoiler effect go to major party candidates, exaggerating major party support.

5 - High Voter Satisfaction and Turnout

Voters will enjoy having a powerful voice in fair elections. Voter turnout will grow.

6 - Fewer Spoiled Ballots

Marking two candidates will spoil a Choose 1 ballot. A Ranked Choice ballot is spoiled if two candidates have an equal rank. No problem in either case on a Score ballot.

Traditional Plurality Voting is Not Reliable

The problems above threaten every choose 1 Plurality election with three or more candidates. Voting system experts consider Plurality voting, to be near the bottom of the heap. Only Random Choice and Dictatorship are lower.

Plurality Voting Protects a Dysfunctional Duopoly

Plurality voting locks in two-party rule. Score methods make elections fair.

Score, STAR, BTR-Score

Score, STAR, and BTR-Score have qualities that work well for elections in America.

Score Voting

Score Voting, also known as Range Voting, is easy for voters and easy to count. Total the votes for each candidate; the one with the most votes wins.

Strategy

The instructions encourage a basic strategy: (with a 0 - 6 range)
Cast 6 votes for your favorite candidate.
Cast 0 votes for the worst candidate.
Cast votes for the other candidates in comparison.
Ties are allowed, even for best and worst. Blanks equal 0 votes.

It is always good strategy to give your favorite 6 votes and the worst candidate 0 votes. If you give your favorite 5 votes and the worst 2 votes, you would have less voting power than a person who gives their favorite 6 votes and their worst 0 votes.

If you give your favorite 6 votes and everyone else 0 votes, your second choice would suffer.

If you bullet vote by giving all the candidates you like a 6 and all you oppose a 0, you might help your second or third choice beat your favorite. If everyone bullet votes, Score would work like Approval voting, which is an improvement over Plurality voting and RCV.

State Constitutions

Score voting complies with state constitutions that require a winning candidate to receive the “highest”, “greatest” or “largest” number of votes, or “a plurality of the votes”. Cases can be made that STAR and BTR-STAR also comply. Opponents will litigate against any new voting system.

STAR Voting - Score Than Automatic Runoff

Like Score voting, STAR is easy. The top two candidates meet in an automatic runoff.

STAR Automatic Runoff.

In the automatic runoff, the candidate preferred on most ballots wins. If Ivy Independent and Roger Ramjet are the finalists, and you gave Ivy score of 5 and Roger a 3, your vote would go to Ivy. If you gave both candidates a 4, your vote would not count because you have no preference between them.

STAR is a hybrid method designed to be neutral. STAR has no preference towards the middle or the extremes.

Strategy

STAR has an extra level of resistance to strategic voting, so you can vote sincerely. If you give one candidate a top score and everyone else 0, you have no voice if your favorite does not make the automatic runoff.

As an individual, you could bullet vote by giving all the candidates you like a top score and those you dislike a bottom score, but this could help your second or third choice get into the Automatic Runoff at the expense of your favorite. In the runoff, is does not matter if you gave two opposing candidates 6 & 0 or 4 & 2, your preferred candidate gets 1 vote.

STAR topped the charts in VSE (Voter Satisfaction Efficiency). So much so that Jonathan Quinn, the creator of VSE, recommends STAR Voting.^[1] Both STAR and Score were well above Choose 1 and Ranked Choice Voting. The VSE study did not include BTR-Score.

It is more work to count STAR ballots. Opponents will scream bloody murder, but it is not a big deal. Many nations have far more complex voting systems.

State Constitutions

In STAR’s automatic runoff, the candidate preferred by a plurality of the voters wins. This satisfies states that require the “highest,” “greatest” or “largest” number of votes, or “a plurality of the votes.” It is possible that some state courts may not agree.

Careful consideration must be given to the language of any legislation that changes a voting method. For example, STAR and BTR-Score voting instructions might say, “Give your favorite the top score” instead of “Give your favorite the maximum number of votes”.

BTR-Score - Score with Bottom Two Runoff, pronounced “Better Score”

1- BTR-Score - the best method for single winner elections.
2 - BTR-Score will elect the candidate who can beat all other candidates one on one, if there is such a candidate. In the rare event there is no “Beats All” winner BTR Score will elect a deserving winner. Most single-winner methods are not guaranteed to elect the “beats all” winner.
3 - BTR-Score resists strategic voting. An organized effort to game the system would be difficult to organize and could backfire.
4 - BTR-Score complies with most state constitutions.
5 - BTR-Score is easy to explain: Voters use a simple score ballot. The total score for each candidate seeds a single elimination tournament.

Single Elimination Tournament

The candidate with the highest total score is the top seed; the candidate with the lowest score is the bottom seed.

The two candidates with the lowest seeds meet in the first contest of the tournament. The candidate preferred on most ballots wins. That winner then goes against the next lowest seed. This continues until the surviving candidate meets the top seed, the winner is elected.

If Ivy Independent and Roger Ramjet meet in the tournament, and you gave Ivy score of 5 and Roger a 3, your vote would go to Ivy. If you gave both a 4, you have no preference, so your vote does not count.

Strategy

BTR-Score is even more resistant to strategy than STAR or Score. Like STAR, BTR-Score is a hybrid system; with a rated round followed by one-on-one contests. It would be difficult to organize an effort to game the system.

As an individual, you could bullet vote by giving all the candidates you like a top score and those you dislike a 0 score, but this could help your second or third choice get a higher seed than your favorite. In the tournament, you would have no voice when two of your favored candidates meet or when candidates you opposed meet.

State Constitutions

Because the tournament includes all candidates and the candidate preferred by a plurality of the voters wins each contest, BTR-Score complies with states that require the “highest,” “greatest” or “largest” number of votes, or “a plurality of the votes” to win.

Elect the Candidate who Beats All Rivals

The tournament includes all candidates. This ensures BTR-Score elects the candidate who can beat all other candidates one-on-one, if such a “Beats All” candidate exists. If not, BTR-Score will elect a deserving winner: the champion of the tournament.

A New Version of an Ancient Method

Voting methods that elect the “Beats All” candidate are Condorcet methods. Elections without a Condorcet winner become quite rare as the number of voters increases.

Condorcet methods are fair and reliable. Ramon Llull proposed the “beats all” concept in 1299. Nicolas Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, popularized it in the late 18th century.

As a Condorcet method, BTR-Score is reliable. We know it will elect the “Beats All” winner as it should. It will elect a deserving winner in the rare election with no “Beat All” winner. BTR-Score is the simplest Condorcet method. The single elimination tournament is straightforward and transparent.

Help Break the Dysfunctional Duopoly of Power

By giving third-party and independent candidates a fair chance, Score voting will put a big dent in two-party rule. Proportional Representation will break two-party rule.
American democracy will be greater than ever.

BTR-Score > STAR > Score > RCV > Plurality

Score methods are superior to Ranked Choice Voting. RCV allows voters to rank all candidates. Both RCV and Choose 1 are prone to spoilers. To learn more about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) visit our Ranked Choice Voting page. For an examination of traditional Plurality voting, please visit Plurality Voting Pros and Cons. Spoiler alert: The cons win.

Credits

The Center for Range Voting is the leading proponent of Score Voting. Their website, RangeVoting.org is an important source for this article.

Star Vote is the leading proponent of STAR voting. Visit them at StarVoting.org
Star Vote is part of the Equal Vote Coalition. They study and advocate for many types of election reform.

The Voting Theory Forum is an invaluable resource for the latest developments in voting methods. the forum helped us with BTR-Score.

We dedicate this article to the memory of Jonathan Quinn, the creator of the Voter Satisfaction Efficiency ratings (VSE).