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Comment by clolege | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Borda Count just Score voting where you enforce that voters can't give two options the same amount of support?

I would be curious why people would prefer Borda over Score if so.

Not at all. Score Voting as usually defined is continuous on [0,1]. Rescaling to e.g. [1,5] doesn't change this. Restricting to integers on that does; but if there are fewer than 5 candidates, equivalent rankings can still differ for total scores. It's only equivalent if you pick an integer scale [K, K+N] with N candidates, K arbitrary.

That said, I prefer score, or even approval, as that's what strategic score devolves to, but without huge amounts of information loss.

> if there are fewer than 5 candidates, equivalent rankings can still differ for total scores

I’m having a hard time following, can you give an example?

I’m saying that Borda allows voters to give one candidate 5 points, one other 4 points, etc. and score would allow voters to give as many candidates 5 points, as many candidates 4 points, etc.

I'm objecting to the statement that they're equivalent if you forbid ties.

This is only true when you have as many candidates as score slots.

> It's only equivalent if you pick an integer scale [K, K+N] with N candidates, K arbitrary.

or [0, K], K arbitrary.

because you can give multiple candidates the same amount of support in Borda if it is 0.

I'm not super familiar with score, but the advantage in this scenario is that voters call all input the same way and get borda + IRV + a potential condorcet winner.

If you allowed same scores then you can't do both simultaneously and/or the UX gets really funky.

you can do both simultaneously if you count ranked ballots like an election office would: you throw away all tied rankings, and rankings that come after :)

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