score vs. approval details
http://scorevoting.net/AppExec.html
http://scorevoting.net/ShExpRes.html

score vs. borda details
http://scorevoting.net/BordaExec.html

The biggest problem with Borda is that it is extremely harmed by strategic voting. With honest voters, Borda is better than approval voting, and almost as good as score voting. With strategic voters, Borda is much worse than approval voting.

One thing I don’t like about the site is that it tries to argue that straight-ticket voting is awkward under approval voting and might as well be done away with – a side issue that’ll only alienate those that might be interested but also enjoy using this device. I could see the two being easily compatible if additional votes for those outside the straight ticket are simply regarded as votes instead of overvotes – and/or if approval works on the straight ticket page as well.

It decreases voter suppression and if someone has trouble voting, they can always report it and come back to the polls.

This may the first time the Oregon proposal was described correctly here. It had sounded more like the Louisiana “jungle” open primary in previous descriptions.

FairVote’s leaders recognize that although IRV is an improvement on plurality in many ways, it has its own limitations. Accordingly, they view IRV as a stepping-stone to the ultimate goal of implementing an even better ranked-choice voting system, Single Transferable Vote (STV). Therefore, in critiquing what Fairvote has set out to do, we may as well focus on the merits of STV.

The main problem with STV is this. In order to give minority political groups representation and minimize wasted votes, districts have to have large numbers of seats. But if there are too many seats in a district, in a multi-party system there can end up being so many candidates on the ballots that it becomes difficult for voters to make meaningful rankings. Thus, they end up just going with the party line, which defeats part of the point of STV, which is to allow/encourage voters to pick and choose what particular candidates they like best, rather than just supporting a party. Accordingly, jurisdictions that use STV typically have fewer than 10 seats per district.

Range voting runs into some similar problems. If you have 9 seats in the district, and 5 parties running full slates of candidates, then each voter has to score 45 candidates on a 1-10 scale. As the number of candidates increases, it can quickly get out of hand.

When you have legislatures consisting of dozens or hundreds of representatives, and districts of only about 9 apiece, it opens up opportunities for gerrymandering. Neither STV nor range voting really address this. The best solution would be to abolish districts entirely; but how?

The solution is liquid democracy (aka direct democracy with delegable proxy). Under this system, legislatures as we know them today are dispensed with. Instead, each voter is allowed to vote directly on legislation; and he can also appoint a proxy to vote on his behalf. It meets Rob Richie’s three criteria for measuring a method’s political viability in the United States. And it could be combined with range voting.

Of course, even liquid democracy does not address the problems inherent in any democratic system; the most important one being that, when the majority decides to disregard constitutional protections, it can violate the rights of the minority. For a more comprehensive solution, we need anarcho-capitalism. And under anarcho-capitalism, we would see delegable proxy being increasingly used in governance, as well as a form of range voting, since they are both commonly used by corporations. A stockholder is free to delegate his votes to another, or to only vote some of his shares and not others.

Ironically, the more marginal reform – liquid democracy – has had little organized support relative to the more radical reform, anarcho-capitalism. So, we may end up skipping that step in the evolution of governance. Also ironic is the fact that much more work has been put into relatively complicated and outdated systems such as IRV, STV and range voting than into liquid democracy, which has been technologically feasible for decades.

http://scorevoting.net/Irvtalk.html
http://scorevoting.net/RichieRV.html

These are not the same thing. Richie should know better.