Editing Approval voting (section)

{{Short description|Single-winner electoral system}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2024}}
{{Electoral systems sidebar|expanded=Single-winner}}{{Lead too short|date=March 2025}}[[File:Approval ballot.svg|thumb|On an [[approval ballot]], the voter can select any number of candidates.]]
'''<!-- Who supports it? Why? How does it do on metrics like [[social utility efficiency]] or [[Condorcet efficiency]]? Where is it used? What studies are there on it? -->Approval voting''' is a single-winner [[rated voting]] system where voters can approve of all the candidates as they like instead of [[Plurality voting|choosing one]]. The method is designed to eliminate [[vote-splitting]] while keeping [[election administration]] simple and [[Summability criterion|easy-to-count]] (requiring only a single score for each candidate). Approval voting has been used in both organizational and political elections{{Which|date=March 2025}} to improve representativeness and voter satisfaction.

Critics of approval voting have argued the simple ballot format is a disadvantage, as it forces a [[Dichotomous preferences|binary choice]] for each candidate (instead of the expressive grades of other [[rated voting]] rules).