Approval Voting for General Elections

Given the particular strengths of Approval Voting for primaries, nonpartisan and special elections, one might be tempted to discount the use of Approval Voting for general elections. This, however, would be a mistake as Approval Voting has important benefits for general elections too.

One benefit is that election results are more accurate and meaningful with Approval Voting. Since voters vote sincerely more often and election results are expressed as easy to understand approval rankings, election winners and public policy advocates -- as well as everyone else -- will have more information about the voters' true desires. This can help officeholders craft more acceptable public policy.

The increased accuracy of the results will help political analysts to better understand voting trends and thus provide additional insight into the American electorate. Candidates and political parties will use this information to better guage the effectiveness of their campaigns. In the same way that companies generally respond to the actions of consumers, political parties will be better able to respond to the voters.

Using Approval Voting will severely reduce the incidence of "voter regret". Voter regret occurs whenever a voter, after seeing the actual result of an election, realizes that their vote was miscast since it helped a candidate win that they did not find acceptable. Voter regret is quite common with plurality voting whenever there are more than two candidates. It also happens with ranked ballot systems such as Instant Runoff Voting whenever three or more candidates are running viable campaigns.

Finally, since the results of the election are expressed in the form of an approval percentage, the winning officeholder will be able to see if his or her popularity is holding up over time. This is because it is simple for the media to conduct a poll and calculate a new approval rating at any time. This aspect of Approval Voting will increase the value of such polling and will work to keep the officeholder accountable to the public.