Acceptance Voting

Decisive Team has championed approval voting as the optimal voting method for fast group decision-making (see our post about approval voting). However, the form of approval voting that Decisive Team uses is actually not exactly approval voting, but rather a slight variation of approval voting that we’re now calling “acceptance voting”.

In this post, we’ll explain what acceptance voting is and explain some recent design changes in Decisive Team’s interface. We’ll start with a definition.

Definition

Acceptance voting is a voting method similar to approval voting that features a distinction between acceptance and preference.

For each option, voters indicate first whether they would accept the option and second whether they prefer the option. The winning option is the one with the greatest acceptance, and if there is a tie then the winning option is the one with the greatest preference.

The problem with the word “approval”

One common criticism of approval voting is that it is confusing to voters. What exactly does “approval” mean? It’s not as obvious as advocates of approval voting often assume.

Decisive Team has attempted to address this confusion by giving each option two selection modes, one for “approval” (represented by a checkbox ✅) and one for “favorites” (represented by a star ⭐️). This was our initial attempt to communicate the distinction between what we are now calling “acceptance” and “preference”.

In the app, we’ve made a slight design change to the voting interface that reflects this language change.

Previously, the voting instructions were

“Check all options you approve. Star your favorites.”

Now, the instructions are

“Check all options you would accept. Star options you prefer.”

The reason for the change

The fundamental difference between decision-making as an individual and decision-making as a group comes down to the necessity of negotiation.

As an individual making an individual decision, no negotiation is needed. You simply choose the option you most prefer. There is no need to make any distinction between preference and acceptance. From an individual perspective, “preference” and “acceptance” are essentially synonyms.

As an individual participating in a group decision, negotiation is necessary. You must make tradeoffs in order to find mutual agreement between everyone in the group. The option that you most prefer might not be preferred by others in the group. Now the distinction between preference and acceptance becomes relevant, and acceptance is the more important of the two.

In group decision-making, the primary goal is to find an option that everyone is willing to accept, even if that option is not what you prefer.

This is why we’ve decided to make this change and designate acceptance voting as a voting method in its own right, rather than just a slight variation of approval voting. We still believe that approval voting is a superior voting method to most other voting methods (such as rank choice voting). However, we also believe that the distinction between acceptance and preference is important enough to warrant its own designated voting method.