Approval Voting - Uses

Uses

Approval voting has been adopted by the Mathematical Association of America (1986), the Institute of Management Sciences (1987) (now the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), the American Statistical Association (1987), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1987). According to Steven J. Brams and Peter C. Fishburn, the IEEE board in 2002 rescinded its decision to use approval voting. IEEE Executive Director Daniel J. Senese stated that approval voting was abandoned because "few of our members were using it and it was felt that it was no longer needed."

Approval voting was used for Dartmouth Alumni Association elections for seats on the College Board of Trustees, but after some controversy it was replaced with traditional runoff elections by an alumni vote of 82% to 18% in 2009. Dartmouth students started to use approval voting to elect their student body president in 2011. In the first election, the winner secured the support of 41% of voters against several write-in candidates. In the second election, Suril Kantaria won with the support of 32% of the voters.

A form of approval voting is used by the Web site TV Tropes for certain decisions, including names of pages that need to be renamed. The system allows for a vote to be cast in favor of or against each proposed name.

Historically, several voting methods which incorporate aspects of approval voting have been used:

• Approving voting was used for papal conclaves between 1294 and 1621, with an average of about forty cardinals engaging in repeated rounds of voting until one candidate was listed on at least two-thirds of ballots.
• In the 13th through 18th centuries, the Republic of Venice elected the Doge of Venice using a multi-stage process that featured random selection and voting which allowed approval of multiple candidates and required a supermajority.
• According to Steven J. Brams, approval voting was used in 19th century England.
• The selection of the Secretary-General of the United Nations has involved rounds of approval polling to help discover and build a consensus before a formal vote is held in the Security Council.