Divisive vs. Unifying Voting Systems

Our founding fathers had it right, and we broke it.

Our country is divided and becoming more so. Voting ballots only allow you to select one candidate. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it shouldn’t because this limitation is unnecessary and creates a lot of problems. It prevents us from expressing our approval for other candidates, pushes society toward 2 parties with divisive extremes, and encourages negative campaigning and attack ads.

When elections allow voters to approve of multiple candidates, 3rd parties are no longer spoilers and moderate candidates might survive primaries. This voting method is called Approval Voting, and it is used in a variety of political and corporate elections around the world.

A major benefit of approval voting is that winners tend to have much more widespread support. Multiple candidates might win a majority of the voters, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Approval Voting also reduces the benefit a candidate gains from smearing their opponents. Gaining approval from a voter demands different strategies than luring a voter away from another candidate. It should come as no surprise that politics corresponds to the incentives of our voting system, and if the only way a candidate can gain your vote is to attack the other candidates, then that is what will happen. If we want a less divisive and more functional representative government, ask your representatives to adopt “Approval Voting” for your next election.

There are other voting systems that also improve on today’s Plurality Voting system, but Approval Voting is dead simple, highly expressive, and separates each candidate’s votes from the votes for other candidates — meaning that similar centrist candidates do not systematically sabotage each other.