Approval voting is a voting method in which each voter may indicate approval for any number of candidates rather than being restricted to selecting only one candidate. The voter normally marks every candidate they consider acceptable, suitable, or preferable to the available alternatives, and the candidate receiving the largest total number of approval marks wins. Unlike plurality or first past the post voting, approval voting does not require a voter to identify a single favourite when several candidates are acceptable.
Unlike preferential systems, it does not require the voter to rank candidates in order. Each candidate effectively receives an independent yes or no assessment from the voter. The fundamental rule is therefore simple: voters may approve multiple candidates, every approval contributes one vote to the relevant candidate, and the candidate with the greatest number of approvals is elected. Approval voting is normally discussed as a single winner electoral system, although the same basic principle can be adapted to multi winner elections by selecting the candidates with the highest approval totals.
The ballot structure distinguishes approval voting from several other voting systems. Suppose five candidates are standing and a voter considers three of them acceptable. Under approval voting, that voter can mark all three rather than choosing only one. A different voter might approve two candidates, while another might approve only one.
A voter is not normally required to express an intensity of support, so approving a candidate does not mean that candidate is a voter's first preference, nor does it establish an ordering between approved candidates. A ballot approving candidates A, B and C therefore says that the voter approves A, B and C but does not say whether A is preferred to B or C. This produces a distinction between approval and preference.
A preferential ballot supplies ordered information, whereas an approval ballot supplies threshold information. The voter effectively decides where to place an approval threshold and then marks every candidate on the acceptable side of that threshold. The resulting count is based on the number of voters who approve each candidate rather than on the number of voters who name each candidate as their sole first choice.
Approval voting is closely associated with the idea of vote splitting because voters can support more than one candidate without automatically transferring all support to a single option. In a conventional plurality election, a voter who likes several candidates may face a strategic choice about which single candidate to support. Approval voting changes that situation because multiple candidates can receive support from the same ballot.
The system can therefore capture a broader measure of acceptability, particularly where voters regard several candidates as satisfactory. However, the outcome still depends on how voters decide what constitutes approval. One voter may approve only a favourite candidate, another may approve every candidate except an unacceptable one, and another may approve several candidates strategically because doing so may improve the chances of an acceptable outcome. Consequently, approval voting does not eliminate strategic behaviour.
Instead, it changes the strategic problem from selecting one candidate to deciding which candidates cross the voter's approval threshold. Political scientists therefore distinguish between sincere approval decisions, where voters mark candidates according to their genuine acceptability, and strategic approval decisions, where voters consider the likely behaviour of other voters and the consequences of different approval thresholds.
The mathematical counting procedure is comparatively straightforward. Each approved candidate receives one approval from that ballot, while every non approved candidate receives zero approvals. The totals are then added across all valid ballots. If candidate A receives 52,000 approvals, candidate B receives 48,000, and candidate C receives 31,000, candidate A has the highest approval total and wins. There is normally no need for preference transfers, elimination rounds, quotas, or complex seat allocation formulas in a single winner contest.
This administrative simplicity is one reason approval voting has been studied as an alternative to plurality voting. It can also be implemented using conventional paper ballots because the essential counting task is simply to determine which candidates have been marked and then add the marks for each candidate.
Nevertheless, practical rules still have to define issues such as how many candidates may be approved, whether write in candidates are permitted, how invalid marks are treated, whether abstention on an individual candidate means disapproval or merely lack of approval, and how an exact tie is resolved. The underlying electoral formula is simple, but election law must still specify the operational details.
Approval voting differs fundamentally from plurality voting, ranked choice voting, the Borda count, score voting and cumulative voting. Plurality normally permits one vote for one candidate in a single winner contest, whereas approval voting permits multiple approvals. Ranked choice voting records an ordered sequence of preferences and can transfer votes when candidates are eliminated. The Borda count assigns different numerical values according to ranking position.
Score voting allows voters to assign scores to candidates rather than merely approve or reject them. Cumulative voting allows multiple votes to be distributed among candidates and, in common forms, permits voters to concentrate several votes on one candidate. Approval voting does not provide a numerical intensity scale and does not record an explicit ranking among approved candidates. These distinctions matter because each system extracts different information from the electorate.
Approval voting asks whether each candidate passes an acceptability threshold; ranked systems ask for an ordering; score systems ask for an evaluation on a numerical scale; plurality asks for one selected candidate; and cumulative voting provides multiple units of voting power that can sometimes be concentrated.
Historically, approval voting emerged from work on voting theory and collective decision making rather than from the traditional plurality based electoral arrangements used in many legislatures. Academic discussion has examined its relationship to social choice theory, strategic voting, candidate positioning and the problem of choosing a single collective outcome from individual preferences. Robert J Weber published a significant academic treatment titled Approval Voting in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 1995, reviewing its history and properties.
Approval voting has also been considered in organisational and political elections. Its theoretical attraction partly comes from the fact that it allows a voter to support multiple candidates without requiring a complete ranking. The method is consequently relevant to debates about how much information a ballot should ask voters to provide. It occupies an interesting position between extremely simple plurality ballots and more information rich systems that require rankings or numerical scores. Its history is therefore connected not merely with electoral administration but with broader mathematical and political science research into how individual preferences can be aggregated into collective decisions.
The advantages and limitations of approval voting depend substantially on the objective against which it is assessed. Its ballot is relatively easy to understand because voters merely indicate which candidates they approve. Counting is also comparatively simple, and voters can express support for more than one candidate. The system can reduce the mechanical problem in which supporting one candidate necessarily prevents a voter from supporting another acceptable candidate.
At the same time, the absence of rankings means that approval voting cannot distinguish between weak and strong approval. A voter who regards two candidates as equally acceptable gives each one identical approval, even if one is barely acceptable and the other is strongly preferred. Conversely, a voter can manipulate the result by choosing a strategically narrow or broad approval threshold. The method therefore does not remove the tension between sincere expression and strategic voting. The final result reflects both candidate approval levels and the standards voters use when deciding whom to approve. It should consequently be understood as a particular mechanism for aggregating preferences rather than as a complete measurement of voter preferences.
In practical electoral-system terminology, approval voting belongs primarily to the family of candidate based voting methods and is most naturally applied where one winner is to be selected. Its defining characteristic is not the number of candidates, the number of political parties, or the size of the electorate, but the fact that a voter may approve multiple candidates and each approval has equal counting weight.
This makes it particularly important to distinguish approval voting from block voting, where voters have several votes because several seats are being filled, and from cumulative voting, where multiple voting units can be concentrated on particular candidates. Approval voting can theoretically be extended to multi winner settings, but the interpretation of approval totals and the relationship between individual candidate support and collective representation then become more complicated.
In comparative electoral-system analysis, the broader institutional context remains important because ballot rules interact with district magnitude, nomination practices, party structures, campaign incentives and the formula used to convert votes into offices. Approval voting is therefore best understood not simply as a ballot marking technique but as a complete rule for translating individual acceptability judgements into an electoral outcome.
