The supporters of Approval Voting appear to have qualified an initiative in Lane County, Oregon. If the county initiative has enough valid signatures and is otherwise approved for the ballot, Lane County voters would vote on the idea in November 2018.
This type of Approval Voting is new. First, the voters assign a numerical value (registering how much they like the candidate) to each candidate listed on the ballot. It is not necessary for the voter to do this for each candidate listed. Then, the sum total for each candidate is calculated. The vote for the two highest candidates is re-examined, and the number of voters (among the voters who assigned a score to each candidate) who preferred one of the two candidates, relative to the other candidate, is checked. Of the two strongest candidates, the one preferred by the most voters wins.
In such a system, if a voter assigns an equal score to each of the two top candidates, then his or her vote is discounted as an abstention. This feature of the system motivates voters to give sincere scores. This new system is termed by its inventors “Star voting”, where “Star” means “Score-then-automatic-runoff.” Here is a short video about the system, from http://Equal. Vote. Thanks to Independent Voters Network for the link.
This system, along with ranked choice voting, has the virtue of being held in the general election, when public interest is highest. It allows the primary to be eliminated, which also saves election administration cost.