As you may recall, a very powerful technic for single-winner is Approval Voting. Unfortunately, it cannot distinguish between close candidates. When we upgrade the voting equipment, we can upgrade to Score-Voting. One scores the candidates on a range. The ballot, which is both machine/human-readable, one a scale from -9 to +9., skipping over 0, thus forcing voters to come down 1-way-or-another. In simulations, it beats all other systems for single-winner. This is how the ballot would look:

Princess Twilight Sparkle
[+] [-] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

One sums the votes, with abstentions converted to -9. Highest total wins. A filled ballot might look like this:

Princess Twilight Sparkle [-] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

¡Princess Twilight Sparkle gets a score of +9 from this voter!

If 2 or more candidates run, voters must give 1 candidate -9 and another candidate +9.

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skipping over 0, thus forcing voters to come down 1-way-or-another.

Why? If the point of reforming the election system is to give the voters more of a voice, why are you specifically forbidding them a particular position? It seems contradictory. That it makes the system run smoother isn't a sufficient excuse; forgoing elections altogether and reverting to a monarchy would make the system run smoother; the argument against that is that it works against the people having a voice in government… which brings us back to the beginning of this paragraph.

with abstentions converted to -9.

This also seems peculiar. If we have negative numbers, clearly indicating that the scale is meant to represent ‘love the candidate’ (+9) to ‘hate the candidate’ (-9), why would an abstention, which would intuitively equate to a neutral position on the candidate, default to the far end of disapproval? To be accurate, the default position should be neutral: the 0 that you left out above for unclear reasons.

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> " > 'skipping over 0, thus forcing voters to come down 1-way-or-another.'"

> "Why? If the point of reforming the election system is to give the voters more of a voice, why are you specifically forbidding them a particular position? It seems contradictory. That it makes the system run smoother isn't a sufficient excuse; forgoing elections altogether and reverting to a monarchy would make the system run smoother; the argument against that is that it works against the people having a voice in government… which brings us back to the beginning of this paragraph."

Psychometric research indicates that often people are shy with their opinions. This forces them to express them. Voters truly lacking an opinion can abstain. Many people when having to either abstain ro express their true feeling, choose to express their true feelings.

> " > 'with abstentions converted to -9.'"

> "This also seems peculiar. If we have negative numbers, clearly indicating that the scale is meant to represent ‘love the candidate’ (+9) to ‘hate the candidate’ (-9), why would an abstention, which would intuitively equate to a neutral position on the candidate, default to the far end of disapproval? To be accurate, the default position should be neutral: the 0 that you left out above for unclear reasons."

This rule and the summation instead of averaging, prevent AlsoRans from winning:

If we took averages, someone would write a name on a ballot and rate it +9. The writein would have a perfect score of +9 from that 1 vote and would win. We could try to solve this with a QuorumRule:

* "More voters must writein a candidate not originally on the ballot than the squareroot of the number of voters."

QuorumRules can be defeated by campaigns:

Let us suppose that 100 million people vote. The squareroot of 100 Million is 1 myriad. If one can get 1 myriad voters to writein a candidate, the candidate wins despite receiving only 1 myriadth of the vote.

Using summation instead of averages and converting abstentions into -9s solves many problems.

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Voters truly lacking an opinion can abstain.

You say that, but under your system, an abstention is equivalent to absolutely hating a candidate. If a voter truly has a neutral opinion of some of the candidates, but hates one of the others, the only way for them to properly express that would be to vote +1 or -1 to indicate that, although they don't care for that candidate one way or the other, they would prefer her mediocre-ness over the horrors of the other one.

This rule and the summation instead of averaging, prevent AlsoRans from winning: If we took averages, If we took averages, someone would write a name on a ballot and rate it +9. The writein would have a perfect score of +9 from that 1 vote and would win. We could try to solve this with a QuorumRule:

I didn't say anything about taking averages, but your entire answer addresses the problem with taking averages, with only lip-service to the actual question I had. I would say you were presenting a straw man, if I wasn't familiar at this point with your propensity to go on long tangents.

the one thing you actually propose about my actual question, which regards defaulting abstentions to -9 instead of 0, is that it is to prevent ‘AlsoRans’ from winning. But let's examine whether that's a bad thing:

Let's have an election with 100,000 voters. It is a province outside Equestria that, strangely, has a population that is exactly half pony and half Changeling. The candidates are Queen Chrysalis, Princess Cadance, and Hayseed Turnip Truck. Using your voting method, the election results are:
Queen Chrysalis: -90,000
Breakdown: Strongly supported by the Changelings, strongly opposed by the ponies, the votes for this candidate mostly cancelled out. Her final tally dips into the negatives due to a number of abstentions. (45,000 approving votes averaging +8; 45,000 disapproving votes averaging -8; 10000 abstentions)
Princess Cadance: -99,000
Breakdown: Strongly supported by the ponies, strongly opposed by the Changelings, the votes for this candidate mostly cancelled out. Her final tally dips into the negatives due to a number of abstentions. (45,000 approving votes averaging +8; 45,000 disapproving votes averaging -8; 11000 abstentions)
Hayseed Turnip Truck: -847,000
Breakdown: Neither supported nor opposed by the Changelings or the ponies, his final tally runs strongly negative because most voters abstained from rating him at all. (6,000 approving votes averaging +2; 4,000 disapproving votes averaging -1; 95,000 abstentions).
Winner: Queen Chrysalis, with negative 90,000 votes.

Let's examine the election again, but reinterpret the abstentions as 0 instead of -9:
Queen Chrysalis: 0
Princess Cadance: 0
Hayseed Turnip Truck: 8000
Neither of the strongly disliked candidates would have made it into office, while a candidate that nopony had particular disagreements with ends up in charge. Sadly, this was not to be. After Hayseed loses the actual election, he doesn't bother to run again. In the next election (again under your system), only Chrysalis and Cadance are on the ballots, and the results are:
Queen Chrysalis: -36,000
Breakdown: After several years of heavy-hoofed rule under a government that favors one portion of the citizenry over the other, the electorate is even more polarized than last time; but much like before, the positive and negative votes cancel out, leaving her slightly in the negative due solely to abstentions. (48,000 approving votes averaging +8.5; 48,000 disapproving votes averaging -8.5; 4000 abstentions)
Princess Cadance: -49,000
Breakdown: Having not been in the the public's mind as much as Chrysalis, the electorate's polarization is less pronounced; but much like before, the positive and negative votes almost completely cancel out, leaving her slightly in the negative due primarily to abstentions. (46,000 approving votes averaging +8.5; 46,000 disapproving votes averaging -8; 8000 abstentions)
Winner: Queen Chrysalis, with -36,000 votes.
Under the adjusted system, the results would have been:
Queen Chrysalis: 0
Princess Cadance: 23,000
This time, Cadance would have won.

Summary: In the first election, the only difference between the sums Chrysalis' and Cadance's votes was that Cadance had more abstentions because she was a less controversial candidate. In the second election, Cadance actually had a higher popular appeal than Chrysalis, but still lost due to abstentions. Treating abstentions as 0 rather than -9 would have drastically changed the results and led to a less hated candidate winning, both times.

It would seem to me that your proposed system has an easily fixed flaw; so I ask again: What reason is there to treat the abstentions as negative, rather than neutral?

Sidenote:

The squareroot of 100 Million is 1 myriad.

This is the Wikipedia article on ‘Myriad’:

A myriad (from Ancient Greek μυριάς, myrias) is technically the number ten thousand; in that sense, the term is used almost exclusively in translations from Greek, Latin, or Chinese, or when talking about ancient Greek numbers. More generally, a myriad may be an indefinitely large number of things.

Are you translating from Greek, Latin, or Chinese?

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Sorry but I had to work 72-hour weeks for a month (12 hour daily, 6 days weekly). I had no time to respond on workdays, and on my dayoff, I just wanted to sleep.

> "The candidates are Queen Chrysalis, Princess Cadance, and Hayseed Turnip Truck."

This is an improbable scenario.; probably more candidates would run.

> "Are you translating from Greek, Latin, or Chinese?"

No. Myriad is a cool number. I also like scores. I like the timeunit fortnight.

Nextup is Systems for Proportional Representation. Unfortunately, that post is not ready, but you will get a chance to tear me a new 1 next week. Please continue to be a Discord's Advocate the Skeptics' Guide to Equestria.