Prefer approval voting over ranked-choice voting

Approval voting improves upon ranked-choice voting in the following ways:

• Approval voting leads to greater voter satisfaction

  Computer simulations show that approval voting leads to superior outcomes for voters compared to ranked-choice voting, regardless of whether voters vote honestly or tactically. In fact, people can vote honestly under ranked-choice voting and tactically under approval voting and approval voting still outperforms ranked-choice voting.

• Approval voting is monotonic

  … meaning that a vote for a candidate always improves their chances of winning. Ranked-choice voting is not monotonic, meaning that a vote for a candidate can sometimes harm their chances of winning.

• Approval voting is easier to understand

  Voters can more easily reason about how approval voting behaves. For example, a voter can easily convince themselves that approval voting is immune to the spoiler effect.

  Conversely, voters cannot easily discern whether ranked-choice voting is immune to the spoiler effect (it is not immune)

• Approval voting requires no changes to existing voting infrastructure

  Approval voting is free to roll out within any district because ballots and voting machines already support the ability to vote for more than one candidate for an office.

You can find a more detailed comparison between approval voting and ranked choice voting here:

• election-science.org - Approval Voting vs. RCV