The case for approval voting

Abstract

Citizens in many US states and cities in recent years have pushed for various reforms of voting methods. This raises the important question of which reform will best meet both normative and practical goals of representative democracy. While also evaluating criticisms of it, we make the case in this article that approval voting is the simplest actionable response. More specifically, we argue that approval voting offers distinct advantages, not only relative to the status quo of plurality voting, but also relative to alternative reforms. By giving voters the ability to support multiple candidates equally, approval voting grants true agency to the electorate to select strong winners among a candidate pool that is more competitive, diverse, and responsive to what voters want. As a low-cost yet high-impact electoral reform, the implementation of approval voting can create meaningful and lasting improvements in the quality of representation and policies.

General flaws of currently discussed election systems and a solution based on a new view on abstention from voting

“…For candidates with positive scores, the tiebreaking score is the negative of the percentage of votes with the worst grade. 6 The No Show Paradox, originally described by Fishburn and Brams [26], refers to a weakness found in certain voting systems where it is possible for a group of voters to be better off if they had abstained from voting. This paradox is automatically mitigated by using score methods, which involve assigning points to candidates by the voters.…”

“…Additionally, we must consider the evolution of time, as voters' attitudes towards candidates can change based on their performance during previous terms. For instance, if we were to employ approval voting, as advocated by Hamlin and Hua (Hamlin, 2022), elected individuals would enhance their chances of reelection simply by avoiding angering anyone. Consequently, any bold moves or decisions would carry the risk of alienating voters, potentially leading to a sense of political paralysis.…”

“…Additionally, there are Approval Voting [6], Majority Judgment [7], Score Voting [8], and its variant STAR Voting [9] proposed as options. These alternatives are accompanied by investigations into various aspects of political elections.…”