This sort of scheme can cause problems with vote splitting and 'spoilers'; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect#Bush.2C_Gore.2C_and_Nader_.282000_U.

This sort of scheme can cause problems with vote splitting and 'spoilers'; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect#Bush.2C_Gore.2C_and_Nader_.282000_U.S._presidential_election.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect#Bush.2C_Gore.2C... , and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criteri... . For example, if 50% of voters are "for" gun control, and 50% are "against" gun control, but there are 2 very popular, well-written posts supporting gun control, and only one very popular, well-written post opposing it, then the gun control supporters will "split the vote" and their best comments will only be ranked about half as highly as the opposition. Which may or may not matter depending on how people interpret comment scores. One alternative that i like is reweighted score voting: http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html