Another alternative to single-choice plural elections that has been gaining traction is Approval Voting. Instead of asking voters to rank their candidates, it asks voters to select all candidates they find acceptable. While this website has been dedicated to Ranked Choice Voting, we will examine this system.

The method for calculating a winner is very simple. Every ballot that lists or marks a candidate counts as a vote for that candidate. The candidate with the most total votes wins. There are no elimination rounds, runoffs, or transfers of votes.

Groups advocate for this system not just because of its simplicity, but because of its ability to produce a compromise candidate in very polar electorates. We will illustrate this with the following example.

Returning to the Wilderness, with the three familiar candidates:

The Foresters who dislike the Lion list the Bear and the Eagle. The Felines who dislike the Bear list the Lion and the Eagle. The Avians who dislike the Bear list the Eagle and the Lion. They fill out their ballots as follows:

The totals are:

And the Eagle wins with the most votes. This illustrates a key strength of Approval Voting. A broadly acceptable candidate can win, with a much simpler system than other strategies. However, there is a tradeoff, which will be illustrated in the following example:

Returning to the more friendly feline community from previous articles:

The Jungle Group which prefers the Tiger but dislikes the Skunk lists the Tiger and the Cheetah. The Plains Group which prefers the Cheetah but also dislikes the Skunk lists the Tiger and the Cheetah. So when the two groups fill out their ballots:

The totals become:

Even though there are more voters in the Jungle group who prefer the Tiger, both sides voted for the other as acceptable, so it ends up in a tie, perhaps decided by a coin flip or drawing lots.

Now suppose in the same example, a single Plains voter lists the Skunk instead of the Tiger:

And now the totals become:

And now the Cheetah wins. This creates a form of strategic pressure. Voters may choose not to approve a candidate they find acceptable in order to avoid helping that candidate compete against their preferred choice.

Approval Voting is simple to understand, easy to count, and has small reporting requirements. Each selected candidate receives one vote, and the candidate with the most votes wins. It can perform well when voters are willing to support all candidates they find acceptable, allowing broadly supported candidates to emerge. In both real-world discussion and many simulation studies, Approval Voting is often viewed as performing strongly at identifying broadly acceptable candidates. However, like other voting systems, it introduces tradeoffs. In some elections, voters may face incentives to limit their approvals to strategically help their preferred candidate.