Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

Number 2 has been proposed before by Lani Guinier, the law professor who Clinton nominated for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. It's been a while since I've read her book Tyranny of the Majority, but I recall that it proposed giving voters multiple votes that they can either case for separate candidates or use to strongly support a few or just one candidate in a general election for multiple seats.

Wikipedia claims that this sort of cumulative voting scheme has been done before, such as in an Alabama county commission where it led to women, blacks, and Republicans winning seats that had previously been held by white male Democrats.