Approval voting

Approval voting is a single-winner voting method used for elections. Each voter may 'approve' of (i.e., select) any number of candidates. The winner is the most-approved candidate.

Guy Ottewell described the system in 1977, as did Robert J. Weber, who coined the term "Approval Voting." It was more fully described in 1978 by political scientist Steven Brams and mathematician Peter Fishburn. The idea of approval was adopted by X. Hu and Lloyd Shapley in 2003 in studying authority distribution in organizations.

Versions of approval voting were used in Massachusetts, England, Greece and other places in the past.

Description

Approval voting can be considered a form of score voting, with the range restricted to two values, 0 and 1—or a form of majority judgment, with grades restricted to good and poor. Approval Voting can also be compared to plurality voting, without the rule that discards ballots that vote for more than one candidate.

By treating each candidate as a separate question, "Do you approve of this person for the job?" approval voting lets each voter indicate support for one, some, or all candidates. All votes count equally, and everyone gets the same number of votes: one vote per candidate, either for or against. Final tallies show how many voters support each candidate, and the winner is the candidate whom the most voters support.