Approval voting elects consensus winners and removes the vote splitting bug entirely, eliminating any fear of spoilers. In St. Louis last year, Tishaura Jones was elected mayor, garnering 58 percent approval from city voters. A year earlier, voters in Fargo, S.D., elected two city commissioners to open seats, with each approved by over 50 percent of the electorate. In both cities, the winners had the broadest base of support of all candidates.
Approval voting is not a drastic overhaul or political revolution, but an incremental improvement to the system, which naturally draws engineer support. While Steve Jobs didn’t invent the computer, he did think about what his customers wanted and tried to give them an experience that was more user friendly. That’s exactly what approval voting does for our system of democracy. Ballots keep their familiar format and are easy to understand.
Engineers require consistent measures of success to accurately track how our changes affect a system. Analytical minds love approval voting for this reason. We already measure the success of our representatives with an approval system: favorability or job approval polls. Why don’t we elect them the same way?
In the tech community, having a great idea is not good enough — it has to be able to compete in the marketplace. Like the rest of the business world, we appreciate brevity, ease of use and cost effectiveness. Unlike its competitor, ranked-choice voting, approval voting doesn’t require new machines, ballots or hardware. It’s a simple, affordable adjustment. Approval voting also has the added benefit of producing helpful information for voters and candidates to use well beyond Election Day. When voters feel empowered to mark both popular and alternate candidates, polls reflect support accurately.
Approval voting has the potential to allow voters to support candidates across the spectrum of ideologies, eliminating the appeal of polarizing extremism. It would eliminate the complication, confusion and waste of the old way. It’s a sensible, intuitive and tested approach that every voting machine in America could execute tomorrow. It can be set up quickly and seamlessly, and, based on my engineer instincts, could very well become as ubiquitous and life-changing as the best apps.
