Submission BOSTON-0272 (Online)

Approval Voting (a revised version of the presentation made to the Citizens' Assembly hearing in Vancouver on May 3, 2004).  [4 pages]

Approval Voting

Presented, but not invented, by Dr. Alex Boston (A Philosophy Instructor at Langara College)

Sometimes a small change can make a huge difference.

Approval Voting is a simple change to the voting process that more fairly reflects the will of the electorate. It was independently developed in the 1970s by various people and has been used to good effect in many organizations, including the Mathematical Association of America, the American Statistical Association, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the election of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is also, in effect, one of the polling options on the Yahoo newsgroups.

Taking the current voting system, the only change you would need to make would be to allow the voter to choose more than one candidate. That is, the voter could place an "X" beside more than one name, if they so chose. They still could not vote more than once for a particular candidate (so one voter could not vote 1 000 times for John Smith), but if they would approve of either John Smith or Mary Jones as their MLA, then they could place an "X" beside both names. The candidate with the most votes would become the MLA.

This system would be easy to apply. The ballot could look the same as it has in previous elections, with only the instructions to the voter being changed from choose one candidate to ;choose one or more candidates. They would simply place an X beside the names of those they "approve" of. And if some people do not hear about the approval voting system and vote the old way, their ballot is not spoiled, since voting for only one candidate is a legitimate option in the approval voting system. Counting votes would also be easy, quick, inexpensive and unambiguous.

In addition, approval voting avoids vote-splitting when there are three or more candidates. Let's say that there are three choices to vote for: Ima Crooke, John B. Goode, and Jane B. Grande. If 40% of the population support Crooke and no one else, 28% of the population would choose Goode first (but most of them would also be happy with Grande), and 32% of the population would choose Grande first (but most of them would also be happy with Goode), then on the current system, Crooke would win despite being disapproved of by most of the populace. On the approval voting system, we might have 40% of people voting for Crooke, and only Crooke, 2% of the population voting for Goode and only Goode, 3% of the population voting for Grande and only Grande, and a whopping 55% of the population voting for both Goode and Grande. The final results would give the nod to Jane B. Grande, with 58% of the population approving of her. (See Appendix A for more details)

By avoiding vote-splitting we give the non-mainstream candidate a chance to be heard. People are not forced to decide to vote either for a non-mainstream candidate that is unlikely to have a good chance of winning (sometimes called a wasted vote), or for a mainstream candidate that is not their first choice, but would be the strategic one; people could simply vote for both candidates. Even if a non-mainstream candidate does not win, other politicians can see how many votes were given to a candidate or party that promotes certain issues, and can thus take into account the views of that candidate in order to win the support of those voters. In general, strategic voting is reduced, and voters can more comfortably express their true will.

Each voter, on the approval method, gets to set her own personal standards for what counts as "good enough to represent me and "not good enough to represent me", using her own criteria. Approval voting thus allows a nice way of tailoring one's vote, without making the voting process overly complex. For instance, one might be fiscally conservative and a strong supporter of environmental issues. In that case, one could vote for all candidates or parties that have platforms that include either fiscal conservatism or concern for the environment as their number one issue. Other ways of tailoring one's vote include: the traditional way: 'Vote only for Selman, the negative way: Vote for everyone but Selman, the your-favourite-issue way: Vote for everybody that supports issue X, and nobody else, etc. Each voter determines for herself the criteria for what counts as being good enough to deserve her vote, and this can be based upon a combination of reflection and gut instinct. Of course, this would be more effective, the more a voter becomes informed about the viewpoints of all of the candidates. But the fact that one could tailor one's vote might itself encourage a voter to become more informed about each of the candidate's positions. A voter who becomes more informed is rewarded with being able to make a more finely tuned assessment of the candidates, and thus an approval vote that more accurately expresses her will.

While it is possible on the approval voting system that there could be ties, this is also possible on any other voting system. But note that a tie on an approval voting system means that the voting electorate is happy with either candidate A or candidate B, so this should mean they would be happy with whatever fair tie-breaking method is used to choose between them. On other voting systems, a tie may occur because of vote-splitting, and hence not reflect the electorate's true feelings. This is why a run-off between tied candidates is usually called for in a multiparty election. Approval voting would eliminate the need for run-off votes, since with approval voting everyone who was going to vote for candidate Salvatore would do so on the first ballot. In fact, a tie in an approval vote would be as likely as a tie in a run-off vote after a tie in a regular vote. That is, a tie in an approval vote would be as likely as "two ties in a row" in a regular vote.

Approval voting allows meaningful and easy to understand election results to be publicly consumable, not only because there are no wasted votes, but because there is no complicated ranking or points system, so the public can understand the voting results directly. For instance, in an approval vote with ten candidates, if Candidate Sarah Mills got voted for by 32% of the population, it is easy to understand what that means. If Sarah Mills got ranked as 1st by 12%, 2nd by 13%, 3rd by 43%, etc., it would be more difficult for the public to understand what that means in terms of support for Sarah Mills and her political platform, and easier for politicians to spin the data to fit the interpretation most favorable to them.

Approval voting does not violate the one person, one vote criterion. Voting for multiple candidates does not give an unfair preference to your ballot over that ballot of someone who votes for only one candidate, since the election result is based upon which candidate has more votes in comparison to all of the other candidates. In fact, if someone decides to vote for every candidate on the ballot, then in effect that ballot has no more effect upon the election results than if someone had voted for no candidates at all. And that seems fitting, since both voters have expressed no preference between candidates.

Approval voting should also reduce negative campaigning. While it may seem that a candidate might be more tempted to negatively campaign against their colleagues (since they not only want the voter to vote for them, but ideally want the voter to vote only for them), approval voting gives the voter the chance to tailor their vote such that they penalize negative campaigners, even if the negative campaign succeeds in weaning the voter away from the victim of the negative campaign. The voter could simply vote for candidates that remain above the fray. Thus, there would be a reason for politicians to avoid negative campaigns.

In a mixed system that elects some people by riding and others by proportional representation, approval voting could be used as above to determine who gets elected from each riding. In addition, there are forms of approval voting that are compatible with voting systems that use proportional representation. While I don't have time to go into full details here, one can looks at some examples at the following web sites:

http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2001-March/005337.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting

More information about approval voting can be found at

http://www.approvalvoting.org

http://www.tursiops.cc/idhop/av/

Appendix A: An example of Approval Voting vs. the Current System

Assume 10 000 voters.

On the current system:

Ima Crooke: 4000
John B. Goode: 2800
Jane B. Grande: 3200

Crooke wins, even though 60% voted against her.

Under Approval Voting:

Assume the same 10 000 voters, but 5 500 of them vote for both Goode and Grande.

Ima Crooke: 4000
John B. Goode: 5700
Jane B. Grande: 5800

Grande wins, because many people (5500) liked both Goode and Grande enough to vote for both of them.

Appendix B: A Quick Summary of the virtues of Approval Voting

The voter may place an X beside every candidate that she would approve of as her MLA.

Easy to vote

Easy to count votes

Easy to understand voting results

No vote-splitting

Less chance of spoiled ballots

Less negative campaigning

More exact expression of each voter's will

Appendix C: Some concerns that were raised at the presentation on May 3, 2004.

1) Does Approval Voting violates the "one person = one vote" principle? Actually, no. Remember, one cannot vote more than once for a particular candidate, and the voter still only gets one ballot with which to express her viewpoint. She may use that ballot to express her preference for one candidate over the others, or to show that she approves of any one of a group of candidates (those she votes for) over the others (those she does not vote for). But this does not alter the fact that only one candidate will win in that riding, that being the candidate with the highest number of votes from all the voters. In effect, approval voting gives the voter the option of saying "I would be happy with Candidate A or Candidate B as my MLA", rather than saying "I want both Candidate A and Candidate B to be my MLAs".

2) Would this system lead to the election of bland compromise candidates? Possibly not. A study by Steven Brams and Dudley R. Herschbach in "Science" in 2000 indicates that people can set their "bar of approval" high enough to decide not to vote for compromise candidates. While whether to vote for an somewhat favoured candidate (as opposed to a greatly favoured candidate) is up to the individual voter, the study shows that people are more likely to set their personal bars of approval high enough that they will refrain from voting for a compromise candidate, than to set their bar of approval low enough to vote for that candidate.

3) If approval voting is better because the voter can more finely tune her vote, why not have a ranking system of some sort to more finely tune the vote? Sadly, ranking systems are more subject to strategic voting (For example, in a system where a voter can vote for a first, second and third choice fo candidates, ranking them accordingly, the voter is inclined to vote contrary to her true will with respect to 2nd and 3rd place candidate choices, in order to attempt to increase the chances for her favourite candidate winning). In general, the more complicated the ranking system, the more possibilities there are to mess with it in such a manner. While no election system can completely eliminate strategic voting, approval voting is less subject to it. In addition, as noted above, the simplicity of approval voting allows for the results of the vote to be easily understandable by the general public. If 43% of the people approve of candidate X, we know what that means.

A Final Note: I don't know whether Approval Voting is better than all other possible voting systems. I do believe that it is better than the current system in many ways, without being worse in any way. It is also often possible to take other voting systems and improve them by adding Approval Voting to them.