Approval Style Voting

Do we like it?

Apr 21, 2025

In September of last year, I joined Donna Baringer’s effort to gather petition signatures so she could be on the ballot for Comptroller in the 2025 municipal elections. “What is this for?” many people would ask as I approached them at a fall festival, 5k race, school picnic, or parade.

People are skeptical about signing petitions, and this process of gathering petitions to get on a ballot is still new. I often had to explain that in 2022, we voted on new rules for local elections in which candidates must gather petition signatures to get on the ballot. The city now has non-partisan elections for mayor, comptroller, and board of alderpersons, and voters can select as many candidates as they wish in the primary. The top two vote getters advance to the general election. “We voted for that?” I’d often hear. Some voters gladly signed it. “Well, sure if it just helps her get on the ballot, I am all for that!” But many others would say “no thanks.” or “I just don’t like signing petitions”.

I did run into a few voters who were in favor of the rule change, so I was careful to keep my opinions to myself in my efforts to get their signatures. I have strong opinions about these electoral changes, and I even ran a small bipartisan campaign, “Vote no Prop R”, to try and defeat it. We failed, and we have now held four elections on this new system. It is still early to evaluate some of the outcomes of this new system, but it is worth evaluating how it is going and taking a look back at how this new system came to be.

Background Information on Proposition D and R

Proposition D was a ballot initiative that passed in St. Louis in November 2020 and established “Approval Style” voting as an ordinance for city municipal elections. Approval style voting was promoted here by “election scientists” from the state of California (more on that below), and is a system in which voters can select as many candidates as they want in a non-partisan primary election for mayor, president of the board of alderpersons, comptroller, and alderpersons. The top two vote getters in the primary election advance to the general election, where voters only choose one candidate.

This system also requires that candidates gather petition signatures to get on a ballot. The number of signatures is determined by the turnout percentages of the previous election for that area. In this previous election, the city-wide municipal candidates had to get 1,200 signatures to get on the ballot.

The ordinance passed with 68.15% of the vote.

Image from the St. Louis City Board of Elections website, https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/board-election-commissioners/elections/results/past-years.cfm

Proposition R was a ballot initiative that was loaded with a wide array of changes to our systems (ballotpedia, n.d.):

Prop R amended the city’s charter to prohibit the board of aldermen from altering the system of voting without a public vote, making approval style voting more permanent in the city.
Prop R also changed the redistricting process by stripping the power from elected representatives, and establishing a non-elected “citizen’s commission” to redraw ward boundaries every ten years.
Prop R changed the name from the “board of aldermen” to the “board of alderpersons”, reflecting the values of inclusivity (which I was and am in favor of!).
Prop R also established financial disclosure requirements and conflict of interest disclosures that were already a requirement under Missouri Ethic’s Laws.

Proposition R passed with 69.14% of the vote. Less than 20,000 (10% of registered voters) came out to vote that day.

Image from the St. Louis City Board of Elections website, https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/board-election-commissioners/elections/results/past-years.cfm

Outcomes

Petition gathering

The one positive that I experienced is getting petition signatures for my candidate. Though petition signature gathering is a hassle and another impediment for potential candidates, it is very beneficial to get out and inform voters early. This process was great for us in this past comptroller’s race because we took the opportunity to meet and inform citizens face-to-face long before the election really geared up.

Another benefit, as pointed out by alderwoman Anne Schweitzer when I ran into her at the polls, is that it keeps the same third choice candidates off the ballot. For example, Jimmie Matthews threw his hat into every major local campaign for many years, taking votes away from other candidates who ran more serious campaigns.

It is not always easy. Getting out in all types of weather and approaching strangers in this political climate is hard work. This could be tougher for lesser-known candidates to get their name out there. Petitioning could be a good thing for deterring unserious candidates, but it may also discourage potential candidates from running because the process is already an expensive and exhausting one without that step.

Voter Turnout

There is not enough data yet to determine the impact of this new system on voter turnout. However, nonpartisan elections tend to lead to lower voter turnout because parties have the resources to make information more accessible to voters (Alberda,2023). In fact, when we had partisan municipal elections, the candidates’ filing fees would go to their party, who would spend those funds on getting out the vote. Candidates still pay filing fees, but there is no transparency from our government on where those funds go.

The Funding Behind Approval Style Voting

The committee behind Prop D, called “St. Louis Approves”, collected donations from many local contributors, but also included some high dollar contributions from out of state donors and interest groups. STL Approves dissolved after Prop D passed and formed the “Show-Me Integrity Action Fund”, the committee for Prop R.

One of the main funders of Prop D and Prop R was The “Center for Election Science” out of Redding, California. Between the two propositions, they spent $232,320 on changing the way we vote in St. Louis. The other big donor is a special interest group from out-state Missouri, called “Show-Me Integrity”. They donated a total of $21,000 between the two propositions.

Contributions*

*Data Collected from the Missouri Ethics Commission https://www.mec.mo.gov/MEC/Campaign_Finance/Home.aspx

What is the Center for Election Science?

The Center for Election Science (CES) is a California-based interest group, whose goals are to promote and implement Approval Style Voting in cities and municipalities across the United States. So far, this has only been implemented in Fargo, North Dakota, and here in St. Louis, Missouri.

They argue that Approval Style Voting eliminates the problems with “spoiler candidates”. They cite the 2017 Mayoral race as an example, claiming that multiple black candidates in that race led to the election of the only white candidate, Lyda Krewson, over 2nd place candidate, Tishaura Jones (Raleigh, 2024).

CES hints that the other three black candidates in the 2017 elections could have been stalking horses, but that is a false accusation. Lewis Reed had run for mayor one time prior to this election against Francis Slay. He was the President of the Board of Alderpersons. This is not the behavior or position of an unserious stalking horse. I would say that every candidate in that race deserved to be there, and that this outside interest group has no real credibility in the matter.

Just to highlight how out-of-touch and unreliable the CES are, they claim that they “smashed the Delmar Divide” with their new system of voting (Raleigh, 2024). They are basing this off the election of Tishaura Jones in 2021, after she gained support from several southside wards. In this previous election, just one year after the Delmar Divide victory lap article, St. Louis found itself still split between north and south.

Aside from the physical divide between north and south/black and white, the Delmar Divide also represents the racial divide within ourselves. This issue runs deep in St. Louis, and it is ingrained in many workplaces, public spaces, and within us, as individuals. I feel like we have improved, but very slowly, over the past few decades. There is still much healing and work to be done. I think it is very self-righteous of this out-of-state group to claim that they solved this problem for us.

Deceptive Balloting Tactics

Ballot Candy

“Ballot Candy” is a popular proposal placed alongside other contentious items to sway the voters either in favor or against the initiative (Musick, 2025). The brains behind Prop R paired popular ideas among their progressive, high propensity voters with other non-related but consequential proposals. They then timed the vote for a low turnout election, when only high propensity voters go out to the polls.

One of these proposals changed the name of “aldermen” to “alderpersons”. Eliminating gendered terms in government is a good thing, but it did not need to be on the same ballot amending our charter to change redistricting and our voting methods.

The final piece of the initiative, which established ethics laws, was also an unrelated and redundant ballot initiative. St. Louis politicians must comply with Missouri ethics laws, similar to those in Proposition R. If the board of alderpersons or another group wanted to establish ethics laws, it should have been on its own ballot.

Strategic Voting

There is an overwhelming amount of information and opinions on the internet about different methods of voting. Ranked Choice Voting advocates, Fair Vote, argue that Approval Style Voting is more susceptible to different types of strategies such as bullet voting, compromising, and burying (You can look up these definitions in the link above).

The Center for Election Science argues that people would rather (or should rather) want to choose a second candidate because they can influence who competes in the next round. Maybe the second choice aligns more with their values than their last choice. They argue that if voters could have advanced Ralph Nader and Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, then George W. Bush may not have made it to the general election (Center for Election Science, n.d.).

Here’s my “everyday woman” take on this whole “strategic” vote debate between the two groups. The average voter, the ones who are not at a high level, consistent engagement, are largely not thinking about strategy. Many voters will research their candidates and initiatives closer to the election date, and do not think in terms of “now who else should I vote for to advance my candidate?” The cost of obtaining the information is high enough, and most voters are not thinking about who else they should vote for to better advance their top choice.

The design of this system facilitates voting based on purely political reasons and not the strengths of the individual candidates. Also, if one voter does not want to vote for a second candidate, but another one does, will this devalue the vote of the first individual, if they have nothing to weigh it against? The previous system of choosing one candidate, plurality voting, is facing pushback nationwide, but Approval Style Voting is arguably a worse alternative for St. Louis.

Conclusion/Next Steps

With so much going on in the world, and this already having been established, why even bother looking back?

For one, I noticed much confusion at the polls in every election since this new system was implemented. It may be beneficial for someone to understand what our new system entails, and also how it came to be in the first place. This is also a lesson in why we should demand more transparency, and how we should better scrutinize ballot measures. When there are multiple non-related items on a ballot, or any obvious “ballot candy”, voters may want to investigate further before casting their votes for a measure. An outside interest group from Northern California poured over $200,000 in replacing our election system with one implemented nowhere, besides here and Fargo. They timed it for a low-turnout election and targeted high propensity voters. I might be in the minority, and most people think this is great!..I don’t trust it.

Next Steps

The new redistricting rules will be in place for the next census. In 2031, instead of our elected representatives, a “citizens commission” will decide how ward boundaries are drawn. We can hold the board of aldermen accountable for making sure that those citizens do not hold any conflicts of interest, and that there is equal representation of different races, genders, experiences etc.
I still want to know- where do the filing fees go?

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