What's In It For Me?

Approval Voting provides the most level playing field of any voting system that is also easy enough to use in public elections. The explanation for this claim requires advanced mathematics that is beyond the understanding of most voters. Thus there is a challenge for those who advocate Approval Voting. How do you convince skeptical voters that Approval Voting is not simply a ploy that will hurt their political interests?

To address this we have taken an unusual step. On the following pages we examine the likely impact of Approval Voting on six major groups of interested political players: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Minor Party Supporters, Politicians and the Media. We think that Approval Voting has positive attributes that will help all interested participants and that is what these pages suggest.

Of course life is all about trade-offs and politics is all about compromise, so these pages also mention ways that each group might suffer due to the switch to Approval Voting. The bottom line is that we think that each group is helped more than hurt by the adoption of Approval Voting.

We invite you to examine this analysis for yourself and let us know if you agree or disagree with our claim that Approval Voting would help strengthen our representative democracy.