This is why I specifically pointed out that this is a problem with Party List scenarios: those D's aren't different names, they're multiple seats filled from the same party's list.
That
said, I wonder whether
RRV isn't somewhat problematic for Individual Candidate races, too, when the range is narrower than the field of candidates. Under such scenarios, you will end up with voting blocs aggregating to, somewhere around 5.5 rather than 6 for their faction's candidates, and lowering the scores for the other factions similarly; I worry that under such a scenario, you might still end up with similar results from a nearly party-line vote.
But let me present another example that may make it easier to see and understand my concern. Here is the real world vote count from
California from the 2016 Presidential Election, converted to a score vote as plausibly as I could (maximum for the single
mark candidate, minimum for the antithetical candidate, scoring others
as low as reasonably possible while maintaining relative preferences):
8,753,788 Clinton >>> C6 T1 J3 S3
4,483,810 Trump >>> C1 T6 J3 S2
478,500 Johnson >>> C2 T2 J6 S1
278,657 Stein >>> C3 T1 J2 S6
SNTV: Clinton 35, Trump 18, Johnson 1, Stein 1 (Droop quotas, final elector to Trump, by virtue of the largest remainder)
STV: Clinton 35, Trump 17, Johnson 2, Stein 1 (Droop quotas, final elector to Johnson, after votes transferred from Clinton, Stein)
ARV: Clinton, 34, Trump 18, Johnson 2, Stein 1 (Hare quotas, final elector to Johnson, based on Range of last Hare Quota)
....and RRV: Clinton 40, Trump 15, Johnson 0, Stein 0
Does that make my concern any clearer?
Stein and Johnson each have more than a full Hare quota's worth of voters that score their candidate maximum, and score only
their candidate above the median, yet neither candidate receives a single one of the 55 electors under
RRV.
Heck, Trump has a full 17.6 Hare Quotas of voters that scored him
as the sole candidate above the median, yet under RRV, he only gets 15
electors?
Even if you adjust the scores so that the minimum score is 0 (so that, eg, a Clinton elector doesn't count at all against a Trump voter), the results are still 37 Clinton, 18 Trump, 0 Johnson, 0 Stein (SNTV, STV, and ARV would return the same results).
If that's what happens when Johnson and Stein
voters put maximal space between their preferred candidates and the
others (while maintaining relative preferences), what is the point of such
voters voting at all under RRV? It seems to me that honest votes would be more likely to yield actual results for minor parties/factions even under SNTV than they would under RRV. Does that not horrify anyone else?