/r/50501 Mirror

No. It is mechanically much simpler.

TL:DR: Ranked choice runoff system makes it more likely for less popular but polarizing candidates to win and popular but less exciting candidates to lose, while Approval voting avoids this pitfall and results in most popular candidate winning.

In ranked choice, voters rank as many or as few candidates as they like (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc). Then all each cadidate is given as many votes as they were the 1st ranked choice for. They are totalled up for all candidates, and if any individual has a majority, they win. If not, then there is an instant runoff where the candidate with the lowest count is eliminated (this is the source of the problem I have with Ranked Choice, as I will explain later), then all of the votes that went to him are reassigned to the candidate that was their 2nd choice (or dropped if they didnt put down a 2nd). The counts are totalled again, and anyone with a majority wins. Lather, rinse, repeat until someone wins.

The problem that, as I said, is that people get dropped based entirely off whether they were the most people's highest ranked choices. This disregards their overall popularity as a second choice, or third, etc.

For example, with 100 voters, 38 vote left wing candidate A as their 1st rank and of those, 30 rank center candidate B their 2nd rank, the rest having no 2nd. Similarly, 37 vote right wing candidate C their 1st rank, and 35 rank center candidate B their 2nd rank, the rest having no 2nd. The remaining 25 voters ranked B their 1st, and then split their 2nd choice with 9 for A and 11 for C, the last 5 having no 2nd. So 1st choices are tallied, A-38 B-25, C-37. B is eliminated for being lowest. B's votes are redistributed to their 2nd choices, and now it is A-47, and C-48. C wins as the majority line is now 47.5 due to the 5 dropped votes. But notice two things: First, C wins with less than the majority of actual voters' support, only 48%. So 52% did not support the winner. Second, B, who was eliminated first for being the least popular 1st rank vote, actually had 1st and 2nd ranked support from 80% of voters, a landslide. But B loses anyway. This is why I don't care for Ranked Choice. Candidates that are more agreeable but less likely to stir the most passionate support still lose, and polarizing politicians still win. In fact, they're incentivized to stir up passion to win, which means more lies, fear mongering, media driven campaigns, etc.

Now Approval voting is much much simpler. You don't rank anyone. You just vote once for as many or as few people as you would approve of to win. The one with the most approval votes wins. Simple as that. So with the exact same setup and vote as in the above example, but with Approval voting we get the following results: A-47, B-80, C-48. B wins, as damn well they should.

That is why I like Approval Voting. It does not promote polarizing politics. It promotes compromise, coalition between parties, actions and results over party loyalty, etc. Hell, it would even be good strategy for like minded candidates to promote one another as they are more likely to earn Approval from the others' supporters without the risk of spoiling their own votes.

The one and only possible fault with Approval to my knowledge is that if everyone gets overly strategic and only votes for one person each instead of anyone they would actually approve of, then it will often be the case that the winner does not get a majority of votes.... but do you know what that is called? First Past the Post, the shit we already have now. Worst case scenario for Approval is our current system, so... yeah, go Approval voting!

Approval voting is susceptible to strategies including burial, which leads to a "chicken dilemma".

It fails the Condorcet criterion (elect the candidate who would beat all others 1-on-1 when it exists).

There are better methods such as ranked pairs: this nice table compares voting methods by a wide range of properties including Condorcet criterion.