aaronhamlin
Law Student
Many voters whine and complain that the system is terrible. Yet, they continue to encourage a 98% incumbency rate. Part of the issue is vote splitting and not being able to honestly vote for one's favorite in single-seat elections (switching to multi-seat proportional representation would do wonders, but let's keep this simple for now). Two systems address those issues of voting splitting and dishonest favorites: range and approval voting. They do this by allowing information on all candidates to be expressed (and always counted) and they allow identical votes for candidates. (I'll stick to approval voting for this post and save range for another day.)
Approval voting works by having the voters indicate all the candidates they approve of. The candidate with the highest average wins.
A more thorough background on approval voting can be found here: Center for Range Voting on Approval Voting
An animated video on how approval voting works can be found here: Approval Voting Video
