Isn't this just a fundamental problem with voting? In FPTP, one voter might not like the candidate they vote for as much as someone else, or in a ranked system, someone might like their 1st and 2nd choices a lot more than their 3rd choice.
We give everyone's vote equal weight, and they can decide how to use that. Within that constraint Range Voting gives people the most freedom to express their true preferences.
> Isn't this just a fundamental problem with voting?
No, it's not.
> In FPTP, one voter might not like the candidate they vote for as much as someone else,
Yes, but the ballot doesn't carry and the voting method doesn'tâ use information about how much the voter likes the candidate; for honest ballots, the information contained in the ballot (limited though it is) has the same meaning.
> Within that constraint Range Voting gives people the most freedom to express their true preferences
No, it doesn't, because range ratings have no consistent, even in theory, mapping from internal preferences. They don't represent any answer to a consistently meaningful question about internal preferences (again, approval has the same problem.) Both bullet (as used in FPTP) and ranked ballots do (in the former case, the question is "if you could dictate who wins the election who would that be"; in the latter, the same question at first, with "and if they were not an option, who would you choose?" repeated until the ranking is complete.)
As noted before, the lack of consistent information problem goes away in social choice scenarios where a concrete meaning can be attached to the markings. examples:
In hypothetical non-secret ballot system where a range voting ballot represents exactly how much the voter commits, in some unit of currency, to contribute to the group if their chosen outcome is selected, the lack of consistent meaning is resolved.
Likewise for approval with a non-secret ballot, in the case where a an activity is chosen by ballot, and an "approve" mark is a binding commitment to participate in the activity if it is selected (or a non-approval is a binding commitment to opt-out.)
Isn't this just a fundamental problem with voting? In FPTP, one voter might not like the candidate they vote for as much as someone else, or in a ranked system, someone might like their 1st and 2nd choices a lot more than their 3rd choice.
We give everyone's vote equal weight, and they can decide how to use that. Within that constraint Range Voting gives people the most freedom to express their true preferences.