What is Approval Voting?

Approval voting is a method in which voters are allowed to select any number of candidates they approve of, rather than just one. In essence, it offers voters the opportunity to express their support for multiple candidates, without having to rank them in any specific order. The candidate with the highest overall approval, or the most votes, wins the election.

Consequently, approval voting promotes consensus-building and diminishes polarization among voters, as candidates must strive to appeal to a wider range of supporters to secure victory in elections.

Why Approval Voting?

The Center for Election Science supports approval voting for many reasons:

• The outcomes are more representative and reflect voter values.

• The candidate with the broadest support across the electorate wins. Candidates dividing the electorate is not a viable strategy in approval voting.

• It makes every voter more powerful since they have more options. This forces candidates to engage with voters, not ignore them.

• Candidates who build coalitions and consensus do better in approval voting. Being hyper partisan is a bad strategy to win an approval voting election. 

• Voters can support candidates who may not be their first choice but are still acceptable to them. This helps them maximize the chances of getting a positive outcome.

• It eliminates vote-splitting as an issue, which means no candidate can ever be a “spoiler.”

• It can run on our current machines, which makes it very inexpensive and easy to pick up for communities and administrators.