Politics

It would change every election that Missouri folks vote in, no matter what kind. The process would be by state constitutional amendment through referendum. You can take a look at the plain-English version of the amendment proposal here, by clicking the link inside. I didn't want to link directly to it because for some reason they have the bill inside a PDF.

You're correct on your research about other alternative voting systems in the US. Missouri would be the first. Missouri would also be the first to change all elections to an alternative system, which would be a big win. Maine still uses "choose one" for state offices and Alaska still uses "choose one" for primaries. Since Missouri is going for a constitutional amendment, they can go for the whole hog without any issue.

Hah, I know! The biggest drawback is that Approval/Freedom Voting doesn't have a good name! I would have named it Binary Voting, since you can think of it as voting yes/no on every candidate, but even then I'm not sure how good a name that is.

But hell, if naming it 🦅Freedom Voting🦅 is what gets us voting reform? I'm all for it.

Personally, I don't think any voting system is enough to break the duopoly, you need to have multi-seat and/or proportional representation, but it's a good first step. Approval is great for single-winner elections and it's very easy to tweak for multi-winner and proportional elections, so it's a no-brainer when you're thinking multiple steps ahead.

You can donate across state lines, but I understand if you're not comfortable doing that. Personally I think donating to campaigns outside of your state really ought to be illegal, but it's not, so every political campaign solicits nationally. It's one of those things where you're essentially forced to do it because everyone else does. Not doing it is just handing your competition and advantage they'll happily take. I think it's total bullshit, but the people who write the laws got into power using nationally funded campaigns so...

Yeah, anything is better than "choose one," but you should really fix it right the first time, you know? Plus, Approval is more adaptable to alternate representation systems, like proportional or multi seat elections.

I'm going to be so stoked if we hit our funding goal, getting Approval into a state constitution would be HUGE.

I'll admit that I personally like ranked choice voting more because it lets you see how many people choose Candidate A as #1, #2, etc. Still, I get that this can be complicated for some voters and we want to make things as easy as possible for them.

Whether a place goes ranked choice or approval, they're still doing better than if they stayed with First Past The Post.