Isn’t giving each candidate a score even more gameable than ranking candidates. If I like candidate A and think candidate B is their best opposition I can give candidate A 5.0 and candidate B 0.0 even if my real opinion of candidate B is 3.0. Lowering candidate B’s score artificially definitely helps candidate A.
Absolutely. Naive exaggeration is a fantastic way to make your vote count more than others in score voting. It also encourages more negative campaign tactics, since convincing a voter to rank your opponent 0 rather than 4 is literally 4 times as powerful as convincing them to rank you a 5 rather than a 4.
I think you misread the comment you're replying to. Calculating a total score is simply summing the scores assigned to a candidate from each voter, so there's no way to "lower candidate B's score artificially". There's no averaging going on here.
consider a green party supporter who normally votes democrat. with score voting or approval voting, he also votes green (of course).
with ranked voting, he still ranks the democrat strategically in 1st place to avoid getting the republican, and that makes it impossible for third parties to grow. ranking is too vulnerable to strategy.
