Setting up a geographic target for a vanity domain like .me, .io, .it etc. is confusing and this is the reason Matt Cutts has refrained from passing on a potential solution to the problem. Nowadays domains are being used for many purposes rather than directly being used for specific purpose based on the generic domains.
Here is a video by Google distinguished engineer, Matt Cutts which discusses the issue of setting geographic target in Google Webmasters Tools for vanity domains like ran.ge.