Independents and Approval Voting

Independent voters have a lot to gain from Approval Voting. The most important thing is that major party candidates will not be able to demonize their opponents as easily since swing voters could look beyond the attackers for candidates to support. This allows independent voters the unique opportunity to insist on more meaningful campaigns and more reasonable and acceptable candidates.

Independent politicians will both win and lose by the switch to Approval Voting. The winners will be independent candidates who can appeal to a broad array of voters. Such "consensus candidates" would have a legitimate chance to win with Approval Voting even if they were not the top choice of a large percentage of voters.

On the other hand, independent candidates that rely on a strong minority base will not fare well if they cannot earn support beyond their base. This is because they can no longer rely on vote splitting to weaken their rivals and thus allow them to win. This is a unique aspect of Approval Voting. No other voting system does as good a job of assuring that candidates with high negative ratings are not ultimately elected.

Another easy to overlook aspect of Approval Voting is that even voters who dislike all of the candidates can still cast a sincere vote with Approval Voting. You do this by simply casting a vote with no candidates marked for approval. In other voting systems a ballot with no votes is discarded, but in Approval Voting this ballot still counts. (It simply lowers the approval percentage of all of the candidates.) Of course such a "None of the Above" vote will not help determine who wins the election, but it will show up in the results and so the ultimate winner will have a more accurate idea about the true level of approval that they enjoy.

So independents should be enthusiastic about Approval Voting. The level playing field that it provides gives independent candidates a real chance to win elections without enhancing the chances of truly despised candidates.

Even more importantly, the overall quality of candidates in the general election will improve if political parties use Approval Voting for their party primaries. This helps independent voters by providing them with a better ballot featuring more acceptable candidates. In fact this helps any voter whose primary interest is electing the candidate who is acceptable to the widest number of voters.