In IE (v6.0), the <label> tags make absolutely no difference. However, I assume you tested your assertion in some browser so that they would provide benefit to others.

Long ago I proposed removing the "butterfly ballot" aspect of the buttons by putting the "++" and "--" labels between the buttons (which also pushes the buttons farther apart which addresses other people's concerns).

Looking critically at the current display, I find the characters are too small and too low (especially the dashes^Wminus signs) compared to the radio buttons so I'd drop the <font size="1"> and add <tt> which gives you buttons that look a bit like:

instead of the current

(Using the "currency" symbol, ¤, in place of the radio button that I can't display here.)

But I know some will find my solution strange looking so perhaps the best consesus we can expect would be to use <label>, a better font, and a bit of spacing so they look about like:

I also looked at separators (they just cluttered things up since the labels aren't words) or even

but that is probably overkill. (:

Or also do as requested:

at the top of the thread, which leaves them numerically sorted, which I like.

In IE (v6.0), the <label> tags make absolutely no difference.

Sigh. Mozilla works correctly. Opera probably does too, but I don't know about that.

Makeshifts last the longest.

--¤      ¤ +=0    ¤ ++

?

I refuse to make "downvote" the most prominent (leftmost) option when voting. And, as I said, some don't like the labels being on different sides of their buttons.

What I plan to do is improve the font/label issues as I outlined above and add a new option for "null vote" (in user settings) that puts the null vote in the middle.

This means that most people won't notice much of a change (just a little bit easier-to-read labels and the buttons a little bit further apart) and yet anyone can choose to have the null vote in the middle to further reduce the consequences of misclicking.

                - tye