In Approval Voting, one finds the worst candidate and the best candidate and approve all candidates closer to the best candidate then the worst. Unlike Plurality (vote for only 1 candidate). Approval is not subject to Duverger's Law (vote-splitting causing similar candidates to lose. Unlike the false reform of IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), it allows 3rd parties and independents to win.

Yay for them! I'm always glad to hear that anyone has adopted a more effective system than straight majority...

6656137

You mean plurality:

Under plurality, one can win with a plurality (the largest percentage of the vote but less than a majority (>50%) of the vote). Some people call Plurality 1st-Past-The-Post. I shall give an illustrative example:

We have Anna and Bob. Their totals are thus:

Anna:
60%

Bob:
40%

¡Anna wins with 60% of the vote!

Carla enters the raceWe views are similar to Anna:

Anna:
35%

Bob:
40%

Carla:
35%

Unfortunately, Bob won with only the plurality of 40% because of the vote-splitting of Plurality.

¡Let us try the same election under Approval:

Anna:
60%

Bob:
40%

Carla:
54%

¡Anna wins!

Approval is not subject to Duverger's Law:

If 1 side of the political spectrum has only 1 party, but the other side has more than 1 party, the side with only 1 political party will win. This leads to only Republicrats and Democans being able to win.

Because Approval allows one to Approve both the Greens and the Democrats or the Libertarians and the Republicans, not only are the Greens and Libertarians _"*NOT*"_ spoilers, but if they are better than the Republicans and Democrats, they can win. Independents can also win too.

Fascinating...

6656591

Yes indeed. If you forgot, I started to write a series about electoral mathematics, but life intervened. I was less than half through the voting systems using ranked choice. Approval is not the best system, but is good and is perhaps the best when we take into account KISS:
"¡Keep It Simple, Stupid!"

Many of the better systems have a complicated error-prone ballot which must be filled out perfectly, or the ballot becomes uninterpretable and the vote-counters have no choice but to toss the ballot. Approval is easy to fill:

"¡Just approve all of the good candidates!"

Here is an example:

[ * ] Anna
[   ] Bob
[ * ] Carla
[ * ] Daniela
[ * ] Eric

¡It is that simple!