Fixing The Bottleneck Behind Every EA Cause: Our Broken Voting System

By Brian Blend @ 2025-11-18T19:09 (+10)

Overview

Since our founding in 2011, The Center for Election Science (CES) has become the nation’s leading organization advancing approval voting through research, education, advocacy, and on-the-ground implementation. To date, we’ve helped cities adopt approval voting, supported legislative champions in multiple states, and built a robust evidence base to improve our elections.

In 2025, CES made major progress toward real-world pilots, legislative breakthroughs, community partnerships, and empirical research that will influence election reform nationally. This year alone, we worked across multiple states, strengthening both bipartisan coalitions and local civic movements. We also expanded our data and legislative capacity, enabling faster response to emerging political windows—several of which appeared in Utah and Maryland.

We will update this post in January 2026 to include final developments from the remainder of 2025.

What is Approval Voting?

Approval voting is a straightforward, voter-friendly method where individuals can select (“approve”) as many candidates as they wish, rather than being restricted to choosing only one. This small shift creates a major improvement in how elections function. Instead of forcing voters to strategize, guess electability, or worry about “wasting” their vote, approval voting allows them to express their full and honest preferences.

Under approval voting, the candidate with the most total approvals wins. That simple tally produces outcomes that more accurately reflect the will of the community. Because voters aren’t limited to a single choice, strong but lesser-known candidates, consensus builders, and independents have a fairer shot—while extreme or polarizing candidates are less likely to win with only narrow bases of support, like they do now. The system rewards candidates who appeal to a broad coalition rather than those who rely on fragmentation.

Approval voting also eliminates the common problems of vote splitting and spoilers. In plurality elections, similar candidates can divide their supporters, allowing someone less preferred by most voters to win. Approval voting fixes this by letting voters support all candidates they find acceptable. Research consistently shows that approval voting elects candidates who better represent the majority’s preferences, increases voter satisfaction, and strengthens trust in election outcomes.

Perhaps most importantly, approval voting is remarkably easy to implement. It requires no new voting machines, no costly ballot redesigns, and minimal voter education. In many jurisdictions, it can be adopted simply by adjusting existing ballot instructions and machine settings. Because of its simplicity, transparency, and effectiveness, approval voting is a powerful, practical reform that helps deliver elections that are fairer, more representative, and more reflective of real voter support.

Clear here to see a visual explanation of how approval voting works. 
 

Why This Reform and Why Now?

For the Effective Altruism community, approval voting is a meta-level intervention that supports nearly every other cause area. EA solutions — whether in global health, AI governance, biosecurity, climate, animal welfare, or institutional decision-making — ultimately rely on governments willing and able to enact evidence-based policy. A voting system that produces polarizing, low-mandate leaders makes long-term, high-impact policymaking difficult or impossible. Approval voting expands the political space for consensus-driven candidates, reduces the influence of entrenched interests, improves epistemic quality in public decision-making, and increases the likelihood that governments will adopt policies aligned with broad societal welfare rather than narrow partisan objectives. In this sense, approval voting is a governance-level force multiplier: by repairing the input system of democracy, it increases the tractability and durability of progress across the entire portfolio of EA priorities. Approval voting is a straightforward, voter-friendly method where individuals can select (“approve”) as many candidates as they wish, rather than being restricted to choosing only one. This small shift creates a major improvement in how elections function. Instead of forcing voters to strategize, guess electability, or worry about “wasting” their vote, approval voting allows them to express their full and honest preferences.
 

I. Background

The Center for Election Science (CES) is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to strengthening American democracy through approval voting—a simple, cost-free upgrade to current elections that gives voters the freedom to support all the candidates they approve of.

Our mission is to bring fairness, representation, and trust back into how we vote by:

• Providing world-class research and public education rooted in political science and voter psychology.
• Supporting policymakers, election administrators, and civic coalitions with implementation expertise.
• Running real-world pilot programs that demonstrate how approval voting performs under real voter behavior—not theory or simulation.
• Advocating for evidence-based electoral reforms that expand consensus, reduce polarization, and increase voter voice.

Historically, CES has played a unique role in the election reform ecosystem by:

• Filling the evidence gap through large-scale voter studies conducted in partnership with SurveyUSA and academic researchers.
• Advancing reforms without partisanship, earning trust across the political spectrum.
• Avoiding high-cost ballot initiatives and instead pursuing cost-effective, scalable legislative and pilot-based wins.
• Building durable local coalitions rather than parachuting in—as demonstrated by our years-long relationship-building in places like Utah, Missouri, and Maryland.

CES is now entering one of the most consequential phases in its history: with live implementation scheduled in Utah, a mayor-backed municipal pilot pathway in Maryland, and legislative momentum building in multiple states, the next 12–24 months may determine the trajectory of approval voting for decades.
 

II. A Year in Review

Key Numbers and Reach (2025)

• Number of states engaged: 5
• Active legislative efforts: 2 (Maryland & Utah)
• Pilot programs in development: 2 (Frederick & Cumberland, MD)
• Major voter studies conducted: 3
• Free Public presentations, events, & trainings: 7

Program Distribution

By Intervention Type

Our work in 2025 spanned four core strategic pillars:

• Pilot Program Development
   Creating real-world demonstration sites in Maryland.
• Legislative Advocacy & Policy Support
  Working with bipartisan sponsors on approval voting legislation in both Utah and Maryland
• Research & Public Education
  Conducting empirical studies, collaborating with academia,  and providing public-facing education.
• Grassroots & Coalition Support
  Partnering with civic groups to build sustainable, locally-led momentum.
   

CES’s “test-kitchen” approach focuses on rapid experimentation, data generation, and low-cost, high-yield opportunities—a model that differentiates us from more expensive, ballot-centric reform efforts.

By Geography

In 2025, CES worked across several regions:

• Utah – Live implementation of approval voting for a special election. Successfully lobbied legislature to pass amendment including approval voting in future pilots.
• Maryland – Pilot development with Frederick and Cumberland officials. Successfully lobbied state legislators to bring bills allowing approval voting to committee in the house and senate.
• Iowa/Colorado – Recruitment of statewide candidates to support approval voting
• North Dakota – Continued monitoring after statewide repeal that undermines home rule.
• Missouri – Ongoing support to local ally groups.
• St Louis- Approval Voting used successfully again in the 2025 municipal election. 
   

Highlighted Projects

Below are several examples that illustrate our 2025 impact and strategic value:

Utah Special Election (Live Approval Voting Implementation)

CES and partners secured a groundbreaking opportunity: the first use of approval voting by a political party to select a sitting replacement  in U.S. history. This initiative emerged when the Forward Party considered approval voting for selecting a State Senate nominee—an extraordinary natural experiment and national proof point.

CES will provide:

• Technical guidance
• Voter education materials
• Strategic political support
• Research design for evaluating voter behavior and candidate outcomes
   

Cumberland & Frederick, Maryland Pilot Pathway

Following extensive engagement with local officials and administrators, CES identified Cumberland and Frederick, Maryland as ideal sites for a 2026 pilot. We’ve already begun the required education, legal analysis, and civic coalition building necessary for formal adoption.

SurveyUSA Statewide Voter Study

Our Maryland voter research revealed:

• 74.6% of Maryland voters support improving the current voting system
• Broad cross-partisan appeal for approval voting
• Strong desire for simpler, more representative elections
   

III. Organizational Updates

2025 brought significant internal progress at CES.

Operations

• Strengthened legislative, research, and donor relations capacity
• Implemented a full grants calendar and streamlined application infrastructure
• Improved rapid-response capabilities to leverage political windows

Transparency & Communications

• Launched the CES Language Bank to unify message discipline
• Increased public-facing communication via virtual and in-person events, newsletters, and op-eds
• Started publishing clearer progress updates tailored to donors and partners

Research & Evaluation

• Completed multiple voter studies, including an IRB voter satisfaction study with 7500 registered voters participating (with more in development)
• Formalized evaluation frameworks for pilot impact assessment
• Expanded academic partnerships for 2026 research cycles
• Advocated for the inclusion of approval voting in the NAACP states voting rights act

Funding & Development

• Re-engagement strategy for mid-tier and lapsed donors
• Major gift pipeline expansion for 2025–2026
• Strengthened relationships with state-based civic funders and national foundations
   

IV. Future Plans (2026 & Beyond)

Pilot Implementation

• Execute Utah’s approval voting special election and provide analysis one all votes are counted
• Launch Cumberland & Frederick, MD municipal pilots in the 2026 cycle
• Evaluate approvals impact to increase turn out
• Expand early-stage exploration to additional high-opportunity municipalities

Legislative Momentum

• Support sponsoring lawmakers in at least two states
• Develop bipartisan legislative playbooks for new partners
• Expand coalition-building with local civic organizations

Research Expansion

• Partner with universities to measure voter experience, turnout effects, candidate strategy changes, and consensus outcomes
• Produce new data for policymakers nationwide

Infrastructure & Capacity

• Build a dedicated implementation toolkit for jurisdictions
• Strengthen our evaluation and reporting systems
• Grow CES’s development function to stabilize multi-year funding
   

V. Room for More Funding

CES has more opportunities than we can currently fund.

We estimate that with additional support we could effectively deploy an additional $350,000 in 2025–2026 toward:

• Scaling pilot implementation
• Rapid-response legislative support
• Expanded public-facing research
• On-the-ground coalition and advocacy partnerships
• Voter education in emerging pilot cities
   

Every contribution helps CES seize rapidly emerging political openings—openings that often close quickly if not met with immediate capacity.

If you have questions or would like to discuss supporting CES’s strategic work, you can reach our team anytime at fundraising@electionscience.org.

You can support CES directly at https://electionscience.org/giving

VI. The Path Forward

In today’s deeply polarized political climate, our electoral system often amplifies division rather than reflecting the true will of the people. Approval voting provides a practical and proven solution: a way for voters to express support for all the candidates they genuinely favor, not just their top choice. By enabling more representative outcomes, approval voting helps bridge divides, encourages cooperation over confrontation, and fosters leaders who are accountable to a broader spectrum of constituents. It’s a tool that can move us closer to a government that truly serves everyone, not just the loudest voices.

At the Center for Election Science, we are dedicated to making this vision a reality. Through research, advocacy, and strategic partnerships, we work to implement approval voting in communities across the country, helping create elections that reflect the preferences of all voters. Your interest and support are vital in this effort. Thank you for taking the time to consider our work and for joining us in shaping a more representative, functional, and inclusive democracy. Together, we can strengthen the foundations of our union and ensure a government that works for all people.