Approval Voting: A New Election Reform

The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1955800 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 78 (4) ◽

pp. 952-958 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

Richard G. Niemi

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Strategic Behavior ◽

Condorcet Winner ◽

Approval Voting ◽

Election Reform ◽

Strategy Proof

Approval voting is being promoted as “the election reform of the 20th century” (Brams, 1980, p. 105), and indeed if voters' preferences are dichotomous, approval voting has some remarkable qualities: it is uniquely strategy-proof, a candidate wins if and only if he is a Condorcet winner, and voters have simple strategies that are at once sincere and sophisticated. However, all of these results depend on the existence of dichotomous preferences, a contrived and empirically unlikely assumption. Here I show that these virtues of approval voting are replaced by some rather undesirable features under more plausible assumptions. More fundamentally, rather than promoting “honest” behavior, as is sometimes implied, the existence of multiple sincere strategies almost begs voters to behave strategically. I also examine sophisticated approval voting and show that in the general case it need not pick a Condorcet alternative. Ironically, there is a condition under which Condorcet winners may always be picked, but for this to occur, voters sometimes have to vote for candidates of whom they disapprove.

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Supplemental Material for Sophisticated Approval Voting, Ignorance Priors, and Plurality Heuristics: A Behavioral Social Choice Analysis in a Thurstonian Framework

Psychological Review ◽

10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.994.supp ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Social Choice ◽

Approval Voting ◽

Choice Analysis ◽

Ignorance Priors

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Accessible Elections

10.1093/oso/9780197537251.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Ritter ◽

Caroline J. Tolbert

Keyword(s):

Voter Turnout ◽

Population Data ◽

State Governments ◽

Public Officials ◽

Early Voting ◽

Beneficial Effects ◽

Election Reform ◽

Individual Vote ◽

Large Populations ◽

Voting Methods

This book explores the wide variation across states in convenience voting methods—absentee/mail voting, in-person early voting, same day registration—and provides new empirical analysis of the beneficial effects of these policies, not only in increasing voter turnout overall, but for disadvantaged groups. By measuring both convenience methods and implementation of the laws, the book improves on previous research. It draws generalizable conclusions about how these laws affect voter turnout by using population data from the fifty state voter files. Using individual vote histories, the design helps avoid bias in non-random assignment of states in adopting the laws. Many scholars and public officials have dismissed state election reform laws as failing to significantly increase turnout or address inequality in who votes. Accessible Elections underscores how state governments can modernize their election procedures to increase voter turnout and influence campaign and party mobilization strategies. Mail voting and in-person early voting are particularly important in the wake of Covid-19 to avoid election day crowds and ensure successful and equitable elections in states with large populations; the results of this study can help state governments more rapidly update voting for the 2020 general election and beyond.

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Infinite-population approval voting: A proposal

Synthese ◽

10.1007/s11229-021-03242-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Susumu Cato ◽

Eric Rémila ◽

Philippe Solal

Keyword(s):

Approval Voting ◽

Infinite Population

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Characterising scoring rules by their solution in iteratively undominated strategies

Economic Theory ◽

10.1007/s00199-021-01353-w ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Christian Basteck

Keyword(s):

Monotonicity Property ◽

Scoring Rules ◽

The Other ◽

Approval Voting ◽

Property A ◽

Borda Rule ◽

Scoring Rule ◽

Direct Mechanism ◽

Social Choice Correspondence ◽

Choice Correspondence

AbstractWe characterize voting procedures according to the social choice correspondence they implement when voters cast ballots strategically, applying iteratively undominated strategies. In elections with three candidates, the Borda Rule is the unique positional scoring rule that satisfies unanimity (U) (i.e., elects a candidate whenever it is unanimously preferred) and is majoritarian after eliminating a worst candidate (MEW)(i.e., if there is a unanimously disliked candidate, the majority-preferred among the other two is elected). In a larger class of rules, Approval Voting is characterized by a single axiom that implies both U and MEW but is weaker than Condorcet-consistency (CON)—it is the only direct mechanism scoring rule that is majoritarian after eliminating a Pareto-dominated candidate (MEPD)(i.e., if there is a Pareto-dominated candidate, the majority-preferred among the other two is elected); among all finite scoring rules that satisfy MEPD, Approval Voting is the most decisive. However, it fails a desirable monotonicity property: a candidate that is elected for some preference profile, may lose the election once she gains further in popularity. In contrast, the Borda Rule is the unique direct mechanism scoring rule that satisfies U, MEW and monotonicity (MON). There exists no direct mechanism scoring rule that satisfies both MEPD and MON and no finite scoring rule satisfying CON.

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