Approval Voting
Let's approve a fair yet simple election method
In Majority Voting, each citizen only has one vote. In elections where the number of candidates is quite high (say above ten), there could be several candidates that voters could approve of, and at times they could hesitate on which one to vote for.
In Approval Voting, citizens can vote for as many candidates as they wish. The system is fairly simple. Instead of choosing one candidate, the one among those whom you like you think has the most chance to win, you actually vote for all the candidates you approve of. You can choose the candidate you'd have voted for in Majority Voting as well as all the candidates you actually prefer to that one, if any.
Why Approval Voting Should be Approved Now:
this page makes a strong case for Approval Voting. A very good introduction.
Approval Voting in Practice
: Abstract: Several leading professional associations have recently decided to use approval voting (AV). The largest of them, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), with more than 300,000 members, adopted AV in response to practical political problems with conventional plurality elections of precisely the sort that AV was designed to solve. This paper analyzes results of the first three multicandidate elections conducted by the IEEE using the new system. Issues examined include participation rates, use of multiple votes, patterns of shared support, majority rule, AV-dominance, effects on outcomes, and encouragement of candidate entry. In general, AV appears to have had a successful test. Copyright 1991 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Also on the web...
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Approval Voting Home Page
Neal McBurnett's page. A simple introduction to Approval voting.
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Back to election index or on to Condorcet Voting.
