Who here knows about Approval Voting?

[Golden Applesauce]

Don't forget Arrow's theorem.

[Cramulus]

is it different from instant runoff voting? ie - you pick your favorite 2 or 3 options, instead of 1? A friend of mine ran for NYC city council on the platform that instant runoff voting should replace all current voting processes. He didn't win, but I thought he made a pretty strong case.

[Requia ☣]

I think the big difference is that this is simpler to explain to people than instant runoff.

[Jasper]

Yeah.  The only difference is "pick as many as you like."

And when you're trying to change something this basic to people's ideas about democracy, you gotta keep it simp.

[Triple Zero]

I came across a site about this a while ago and instantly struck my interest. I've been using approval voting any time we had to come up with a sort of democratic decision with a group of friends and it worked. Can't say how well single voting would have otherwise worked, probably less so cause in a smaller group you get a lot of ones if you have a large number of options.

I think it was this site: http://www.approvalvoting.org/

Also they have a page describing the advantages versus instant runoff voting: http://www.approvalvoting.org/irv.html

Seems the most important reason is that approval voting is simpler to explain, but there appear to be a few game-theoretical reasons why IRV is less desirable as well.

[Jasper]

I used that site as a source in a speech I once gave on approval voting.