Approval Voting allows each voter to support as many candidates as they wish. There is no ranking, and the candidate with the most votes wins.
This eliminates the spoiler effect, and also changes the role of parties and primaries.
It could elevate candidates who appeal to a broad spectrum of the population. It would also generate a result that indicated who had earned a lot of trust over their career, potentially leading to useful roles for the top runners-up. This is in contrast to the plurality system, where candidates who share support weaken one another, leading most to stay on the sidelines while the most dramatic front-runners attempt to knock each other out at crucial moments.
Approval voting, unlike the similar Ranked Choice voting, is simple to administer, and simple to use for pollsters. While choosing how many secondary candidates to approve along with your favorites can be challenging, it does not create any strategic perversities, especially if opinion polling is able to represent the likely outcome.
âOne person, one voteâ is certainly a beautiful phrase, meant to show that we all have an equal part in the decision. Perhaps, the best way for our voters to truly have a role that can affect the outcome is to not limit us to just one vote.
Approval voting can be challenging for voters with strong preferences. A vote for a second choice counts exactly as much as a vote for a first choice, creating incentives to âbullet vote,â or choose only one candidate, even when voters have second- or third-choice preferences. Because voters canât back compromise candidates without weakening their first choice, the use of strategic voting increases â especially in contested elections. In these races, few voters will vote for more candidates than winners, reverting the system back to plurality-like dynamics.
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In RCV, votersâ ranking for a backup choice only counts if their first choice is defeated, eliminating the incentive to bury support for a second-choice candidate. Therefore, strategic voting is less likely under RCV. In fact, 71% of voters in RCV elections opt to rank multiple choices. See this spreadsheet for an analysis of how many voters choose to express multiple preferences in RCV vs approval voting in 2021.
It makes sense to me that an inability to order your preferences would dissuade people from choosing more than one candidate. âScore votingâ was covered in the YT video from @Nywoe and doesnât have this problem?
Equal.vote says:
Donât get us wrong, we believe that the amount of work to get people educated about a reform, adopt it, and then implement it well is not to be underestimated, even for Approval voting. In many cases it may be quicker and easier to just switch directly from the traditional Choose-One voting method to something top of the line like STAR voting, but we understand that there may be some cases where thatâs unrealistic.
If we are going to make this change shouldnât we go for âtop of the lineâ ?
That quote from The Equal Vote Coalition is out of context. Hereâs what they said before that paragraph:
Furthermore, Approval voting makes a good stepping stone. Because it is very transparent, voters will understand exactly what it does and does not offer. Once voters are aware that vote-splitting isnât a necessary evil, and once voters are aware that there are other options on the table, we trust that people will want to upgrade to a top-shelf voting method in time. A good stepping stone is easy to get to, is stable and safe in its own right, and is on the way to the next step.
And after:
The bottom line is that we need to stop using Choose-One voting as fast as possible and take major steps in the right direction now. Approval voting is an important arrow in the quiver.
And it should be noted they oppose RCV. They portray the methods they support in the context of âvs Top Twoâ and âvs RCVâ. There is no âvs Approvalâ, because it is among the methods they consider âBetter Votingâ:
I donât know if Iâm understanding how this would work exactlyâŚbut how would you ever verify that individual vote? Any election worker could mark up a ballot with votes for their chosen candidates and run up the score for them and it would be fine because everyone can vote for multiple candidates.
Explicit Approval voting: vote âyesâ or ânoâ on every candidate.
Count and record the number of marks on the ballot, and let the voter verify it before they drop it.
Give voters unique barcoded stamps or sticker sets to mark their ballot. All the marks on a single ballot should have the same code.
Physical protection - lightly laminate the ballot in the presence of the voter.
Hole-punch/Pink stamp - Have a machine punch out the filled in bubbles, and highlight the blank bubbles and the area around them. Again, the voter would see this in person before dropping it. Any highlighted hole has been tampered with.
Voters are incentivized to only use the extremes for STAR voting (0 or 5 stars) to maximize the influence of their vote. When this tactic is widely used, STAR voting becomes equivalent to approval voting, but approval voting is much simpler.
Given the need for trust in our elections by everyone involved, I prefer approval voting for its simplicity over alternative proposals such as STAR and ranked-choice. The entire voting process, including how the winner is determined can be described in 14 words:
Vote for as many candidates as you like. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
The ranked-choice system, in particular, has a complexity problem with its multiple elimination and vote reassignment rounds that makes it more difficult to follow and count by hand.
Thatâs true for score voting, but STAR makes it desirable to differentiate between candidates for the runoff. Though from a simplicity perspective, I agree Approval should be the default. However, if the voters place a high value on the expressiveness of their ballot, and donât mind the additional complexity, STAR is a great option.
I would be interested in whether 1-4 star votes persist in practice as voting tactics evolve over multiple election cycles. The incentive to go 5 or 0 stars to maximize your influence on the first round (to get your preferred candidate(s) through) is in tension with the need to differentiate candidates in the second round. Perhaps those who have used STAR voting in practice could weigh in here.
If it works and voters want a score-style ballot (and are okay with counting âstarsâ instead of single votes) then STAR would be a good option.
Realistically speaking, why would people vote for anyone other than who they actually want to win? If itâs all about âWho gets the most votesâ but with each person getting a number of potential votes equal to the number of candidates, why would someone vote for more than their first candidate and risk increasing the vote count for other people?
Vote splitting. If there are multiple options that meet my standards, my voice is harmed because neither of them get a true measure of support. My support of one comes with an opportunity cost to support the other.
Plus everyone who only likes one is still free to vote that way. Itâs a very liberty-oriented system.
In circumstances where you have an option you definitely want to win, the strategically superior option is to vote for only a single option because otherwise youâre watering down your vote.
When only a single option can win, then youâre actually hurting your first choice by voting for anyone else.
And whoever finds the right mix of a good candidate and convincing people to vote for that candidate and only that candidate is going to emerge victorious over anyone who relies on the supposedly more âliberty-oriented systemâ.
Itâs basically just a âfeel goodâ voting system that hurts anyone who actually uses it as designed.
Is there a compelling justification to compel voters to mark only one candidate?
I think the answer is clearly ânoâ. It is not up to [someone other than the voter] to dictate how they use their vote. Votes in support of multiple candidates should be allowed, not thrown out. There are times when voters are better off bullet voting; there are times when voters are better off hedging their bets. Neither strategy is inherently wrong. If a candidate can independently persuade the most people to vote for them, he deserves to win.
Approval voting produces more accurate representation, because it prioritizes candidates with broad appeal across the electorate. It is not just a âfeel goodâ system.
That said, even if it was just âabout the feelsâ, limitations inherently require justification that the free position does not. Why throw out real votes from real voters? Why silence people for not following an arbitrary rule? If there is no justification for the âchoose oneâ rule, that alone is a compelling reason to change.
It frees voters to indicate honest support for the people who would best represent them, despite the strategic considerations. Look, Iâm not saying there wonât still be some calculus where ads influence the perception who the competitive candidates are. But candidates who present good ideas, instead of just having a lot of money, will do better, because there is no cost to also supporting them.
Example:
Suppose my favorite candidate is the Constitution party nominee. I believe he best represents my values, and will bring fresh ideas my state legislature is in desperate need of. However, I observe that the campaign efforts of the Democrat and Republican are superior. The area I live in is fairly conservative, but if we split the vote, the Democrat could win.
The current system forces a dilemma on me. Do I vote for the person I think deserves the position (the Constitution candidate) and potentially allow the Democrat to win? Or do I betray my values and vote for the candidate with the money (the Republican), to prevent the Democrat from winning?
Approval voting does not force me to betray my values. All it does is pose the question to what degree I want to compromise, strategically. I can show support to both the Constitution and Republican candidates. This opens up future elections to be primarily between these two parties, with the Democrat trailing in third.
Indeed, since both these parties lean conservative (just like my district) this would be a more reasonable competition for a representative position. It should be a given that a conservative district will have a reasonably conservative representative. The important question, when we reach the election, should not be âdo we elect a liberal or a conservative?â, but rather âwhich kind of conservative do we elect?â.
