The trouble with the “one person one vote” rule is that two candidates on one “side” split it. Many voters suffer the “voter’s dilemma”: which to choose, when there are two or more that you approve. Whichever you vote for, the other or others are weakened, and the one you least approve is more likely to win.
After analysing three “solutions that don’t work,” we discover one that does: casting any number of single votes for different candidates.
This surprisingly simple and costless reform turns out to have no real flaw and several other great advantages. For instance, it more accurately reveals the distribution of voters’ wishes; it allows support for new or minority parties to be shown. It is altogether more fair .
Written in 1968 and first published in 1977, this was the first specific description of the idea and remains the most lucid and cogent. The idea was independently proposed in 1977 and soon after by several other writers, one of whom coined the term “approval voting”.
This pamphlet was previously entitled “The Arithmetic of Voting.” The new edition has been re-titled “Approval Voting” because it includes, besides the original essay, several others:
–A comparison with the alternative system unsuccessfully offered in the British referendum of 2011.
–Examples of elections acutely illustrating the problem.
–Examples of the use of what was essentially approval voting in various countries and periods, and of some administrations that have converted to it.
–People who are campaigning for Approval Voting.
–Exit polls that are like “an X-ray into voting systems” and reveal what would happen if voters were allowed to express their Approval.
6 x 9 in., 29 pages; diagrams, cartoons. 1987; reprinted 1999, 2001, 2004; new edition 2019.
ISBN 978-978-0-934546-78-2
$ 9.50
Click here to see the full text of the original pamphlet.
Click here to see a comparison of Approval Voting with “Alternative Voting.”
The Center for Election Science, www.electology.org,has become the most active advocate for Approval Voting.
