The Republican primaries for the upcoming presidential race are shaping up to be contentious. Donald J. Trump is running for the third time and has strong support from MAGA voters who endorse his conspiratorial views on the 2020 election and his defiance of established norms.
Despite this, Trump is not a surefire winner, as several prominent Republicans, notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are also eyeing the nomination. Trump’s views are increasingly seen as offensive, his popularity has waned, and his financial support has dwindled. Even major past donors, like the Koch family, are looking at other candidates to support.
One possible way for Trump to win, despite his flagging support, is by dividing the opposition, as he did in the 2016 Republican primaries. This could happen if more opponents declare their candidacy, and they split the vote among themselves, enabling Trump to win with a relatively narrow support base.
To prevent a repeat of 2016, Republicans could use an election reform called approval voting. This approach was recently adopted for electing mayors in Fargo, North Dakota, and St. Louis, Missouri, where crowded fields were splitting the vote many different ways. With approval voting, voters approve or disapprove of each candidate independently, giving each candidate an approval rating, and the one with the highest approval rating wins.
In recent approval voting elections in Fargo and St. Louis, the winning candidates each won with more than 50% approval, despite facing crowded fields of candidates. The winners were consensus candidates who drew support from voters across the political spectrum.
It is entirely feasible for state political parties to adopt approval voting in presidential primaries. Utah’s political parties can set their own voting rules and can unilaterally implement approval voting. This system still allows voters to vote for a single favorite if they wish, but it also enables them to show approval for more viable second or third choices. By doing so, they do not waste their votes on almost certain losers, but instead, better ensure they have some say in the outcome.
Approval voting enables voters to express themselves more effectively, and candidates who take similar positions can share, rather than split, votes. Consequently, the candidate most widely approved wins. Candidates with strong, well-articulated ideas tend to do well with approval voting, whereas those who refuse to take sides on important issues, or expound extremist positions, tend to be unacceptable to most voters.
The foundation of representative government is periodic elections, and the central problem of elections today is how to translate voter preferences, with as little distortion as possible, into consensus choices. Approval voting offers the best practical way of picking, especially in a crowded field, the candidate who mirrors the mood of the electorate, rather than the candidate who polarizes it.
Ammon Gruwell
Ammon Gruwell, Layton, is an engineering manager and the vice president of Utah Approves, a non-partisan organization seeking to improve elections in Utah. This commentary was adapted, with small changes, from Steven J. Brams’s essay, “How to Choose the Strongest Candidate in a Crowded Field.”