CES Calls on Congress to Use Approval Voting to End Speaker Impasse

The Center for Election Science (CES) calls on the House Republican Conference to use approval voting to quickly end the speaker impasse. Approval voting is a simple, pick-all-you-support type of voting method that can quickly help the House GOP find a broadly agreed upon speaker candidate.  

CES Makes the Following Recommendations:

• Create a ballot of with all the possible candidates for speaker 
• The list should include current and previous Speaker Designates like Representatives McCarthy, Scalise, Jordan, Emmer and Johnson, as well as Speaker Pro Tempore McHenry.
• Republican conference members should receive a ballot with all the candidates names with the instructions “vote for all the candidates you could support for speaker.”
• The candidate with the most approval votes will become the nominee.   

Why Approval Voting?

• The conference needs to find a consensus candidate – approval voting allows an electorate to find the most agreed upon candidate
• Majority doesn’t matter – who can get 218 does. By using approval voting, the GOP could see which of their candidates are most supported AND who could get 218 votes. 
• Approval voting is immediate and transparent. The conference could conduct the vote using pen and paper. There are no rounds or run-offs. An AV election would take just as much time (or less) than the previous system the conference was using. 
• They could create their own, private election on vote.electionscience.org at no cost.

CES is a national leader and principle advocate in the movement to adopt transparent, empowering voting methods like approval voting. The Center for Election Science is a national, non-partisan, 501(c)3 non-profit organization.