Approval Voting (AV)
Approval voting is a relatively simple offshoot of our current plurality voting system. Rather than selecting a single favorite PN, AV allows constituents to select all of the PNs that they approve of. While constituents must approve at least one PN, the only limit to the number of PNs they can approve of is the number of PNs in the competition (in our case, 4 PNs).
Practical Positives
AV is by far the simplest of the methods being evaluated in this paper. This is primarily why, next to RCV, it is one of the most well adopted alternative voting methods in the United States. Unlike RCV, however, it hasn’t yet been politicized to the degree at which it would be banned in state elections (with the exception of North Dakota). As such, further implementation of AV would not hinder the Wilson’s Fountain Committee System’s ability to create contests in certain districts due to the politicization of its voting methods.
Analytical Positives
As long as voters are being relatively honest, it would be almost impossible for a “spoiler” candidate to upend the efforts of more moderate candidates with a broader base of support under AV. The propensity of voting methods to fall prey to the Spoiler effect is often measured through a classic three candidate scenario. In a recent study from Northwestern University, Prof. Robert Weber estimated that “in the classical three-candidate setting in which two similar candidates share the support of a majority of the voters “approval voting will not (at equilibrium) ever have the minority candidate emerge as the clear victor (Weber, 2025).” While it is important to mention that this study was conducted on single-winner AV elections, it still applies to our case as the same “spoilers” can change results in multi-winner elections (McCune, 2024).
Although there are strategic methods that can be used to make one’s vote more impactful under AV, such methods do not reflect the type of strategic behavior that could be seen in other voting methods. For instance, according to the Pivotal Voter Strategic Incentive graph provided by Wolk et al., AV (top two) provides a roughly 0% chance of Favorite Betrayal among voters and a negative percentage for Burial. This means that both of these harmful strategic behaviors are heavily disincentivized by approval voting (Wolk et al, 2023). Moreover, using VSE we can see that AV has the third highest VSE, finishing only behind STAR Voting among methods described in this paper (Wolk et al, 2023). All things considered, AV significantly reduces the incentive for voters to consider electability of particular PNs.
Figure 1
Finally, according to the above PVSI graph from Wolk et al, Approval Top Two offers the lowest level of PVSI for considering the electoral viability of candidates. This means that constituents using AV also have a low incentive to consider how electable PNs are. Instead, they are forced to select only those that they actually approve of.
Practical Negatives
Approval Voting allows voters to spread votes that signify their approval among as many candidates as they want. This is problematic practically for two reasons: first, it requires voters to establish a threshold for candidate selection before they can officially “approve” of their candidacy. While this may not be problematic for some, for those who are less familiar with voting or who don’t have the time to do extensive research on the political landscape, the establishment of an “approval threshold” can be particularly difficult. Second, since AV votes all have the same weight, constituents are left unable to signify which candidates they prefer in the list of those that they have approved.
Analytical Negatives
On the PN side of things, AV tends to promote PNs to take more moderate positions in order to try to find as wide of a base as possible. While some would claim this to be a positive aspect of AV, we identify it as a negative as the goal for our system is for PNs to be as transparent with their beliefs and actions as possible. Such an effect, however, may be to our benefit as our goal is to nominate candidates with more representative ideological positions. That said, we do use this moderating effect to whittle out extremist PNs in our first Endorsement Round of nomination.
Finally, although it isn’t quite as hurtful as when it happens in RCV, Bullet Voting is more common in AV than RCV or STAR (Wolk et al, 2023).
As can be gleaned from the above graph, although the PVSI for Approval (top two) is still negative, it is significantly lower than for IRV and STAR voting. This means that voters are more likely to bullet vote in AV than in either of the other two methods.[1] Some would argue that this isn’t a problem for AV because such voters may only approve one PN in the field. Unfortunately, past examples show that when voters bullet vote in AV, they tend to do so according to strategic incentives. For instance, in a 2020 poll of Fargo voters using AV, it was found that almost ⅓ of voters who bullet voted did so strategically (VP, 2020).
Moreover, the same graph illustrates that AV (top two) gives a positive PVSI to Inclusive voting, that is setting one’s approval threshold between the two most popular candidates. Although this isn’t quite as harmful as bullet, burial or Favorite Betrayal voting, its prevalence in AV should still be considered a negative.Figure 2
[1] Although this study deals with single winner RCV, we would argue that it is still applicable as voters are forced to rank in the same way that they would in RCV, leading to similar strategic incentives.