[AnthonyMouse]

> Or they can approve of only one, and almost certainly lose if it's not one of the two most popular parties.

"They can only approve of one" is FPTP, the existing system. Everybody knows that sucks. The whole point of approval or score voting is to avoid that.

Right now if you favor candidate C but they have 5% of the vote and candidate A and B each have 45%, your preferred candidate has no chance and your vote can only change something in determining whether the winner is A or B, so you avoid voting for your preferred candidate.

With approval voting you vote for them and one of the major parties. Then people notice that third party candidates are immediately getting 30-40% of the vote because the people afraid of wasting their vote no longer have to refrain from voting for their preferred candidate. In some districts they even win. Which dissolves the two party system because people have to take third party candidate seriously and starting a new party has a real chance at succeeding rather than being an exercise in futility.

[jfengel]

I phrased that badly. I meant that they may choose to vote for only their favorite, as tactical voting. It says they don't approve of any other, to send a message.

But it's not clear they will feel the message is sent if their candidate loses, and they are stuck with least favorite choice because they didn't select an alternative.

[eru]

So they _should_ vote tactically, and only send the message when it doesn't hurt them.

[ClayShentrup]

tactical voting is normally what we call it when you DON'T vote for your favorite, e.g. a green party supporter votes democrat.

with approval voting they'd obviously vote for green too.

some of the people who normally vote green under the current system might _still_ only vote green with approval voting, but very few would do it unless green actually had a chance to win.

https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletVoting