Approval voting is a single-winner rated voting system where voters can approve of as many candidates as they like, rather than being restricted to selecting only one. Each voter can cast a vote for every candidate they approve of, and the candidate with the most approval votes wins the election. This method is designed to allow voters to express their support for multiple candidates, while both using a simple ballot format and being easy to count.
Approval voting is used in various contexts, including organizational elections, some political elections, and academic settings. However, it is not as widely adopted as other voting systems like plurality voting or ranked-choice voting. Some organizations and political bodies have experimented with approval voting to improve representativeness and voter satisfaction.
The concept of approval voting has been discussed and analyzed by social choice theorists and mathematicians, and compared to other electoral systems. Theoretical analyses have shown that approval voting can lead to more satisfactory outcomes in certain scenarios, but its effectiveness can vary depending on the electoral context and voter behavior.
Critics of approval voting argue that it does not always reflect the true preferences of voters and may incentivize strategy, as well as hinder voters from fully expressing their preferences due to the simple ballot format.
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