Disapproval voting is any

electoral system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and Referendum, referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political ...

that allows many voters to express formal disapproval simultaneously, in a system where they all share some power. Unlike most electoral systems, it requires that only negative measures or choices be presented to the voter or representative. If used to select candidates for an office, or for continuation to a next round of voting or play, it is either single- or multi-winner, as everyone who is not disapproved of is in effect a winner, for that round. A

referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...

or a

recall election A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a referendum before that official's term of offi ...

may be said to be minimal forms of disapproval voting. However, usually only one measure or candidate is presented to be disapproved of. True disapproval voting would require more than two choices or representatives, and would ask voters to disavow one or more.

Voting against

There are a variety of interpretations of the meaning of a negative vote. The term is sometimes used for allowing a voter to reject the entire field of candidates; it can also mean that the only option offered voters is to vote against one or more candidates, but it is sometimes used for systems that allow a voter to choose whether to vote for or against a candidate. The psychology of

veto A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president or monarch vetoes a bill to stop it from becoming law. In many countries, veto powers are established in the country's constitution. Veto ...

ing, protesting, excluding individuals or options, or removing an incumbent, triggers a very different

cognitive bias A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...

and mode of

risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environme ...

aversion on the part of voters, legislators, or board members - thus it is an over-simplification to think of disapproval as simply 'negative approval'. Similar asymmetries apply in economics, where they are studied in behavioral finance, and in social sciences and

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...

, as the expression of tolerances versus preferences, e.g. as in

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...

s. The well-known lifeboat game is often portrayed in fiction as having a disapproval voting form, with the poor individual who is most disapproved of being tossed overboard. General-purpose methods of disapproval voting, e.g. for use in general elections as an

electoral reform Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results. That can include reforms of: * Voting systems, such as proportional representation, a two-round system (runoff voting), instant-ru ...

, have been proposed and discussed by political scientists, but there is little literature on the subject. Most discussion of the issue is concentrated in the theory of

consensus decision making Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to ''consensus'') are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on es ...

, where small numbers of members disapproving of a measure have disproportionate power to block it. Also, there has been an explosion of application of disapproval voting electoral systems in the

reality game show Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 19 ...

, as noted below. Most people are familiar with the concept only from these shows.

Disapproval expression in other electoral systems

Six regions of

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and several other countries of the region allow voters to vote "against all" candidates. In Canada, one can appear at a polling station and

Refused ballot A refused ballot, or similar alternative, is a choice available to voters in many elections. This is an alternative for many people to casting a disparaging spoiled ballot, which is not counted separately from ballots which have been accidentally ...

; although this does not count as a vote, refused ballots are tallied separately from

spoiled ballot In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberat ...

s and no-shows. Any

permits some expression of disapproval, but these are necessarily confused with expressions of choice or approval, leading some to conclude that separating these expressions is best: After the

U.S. presidential election, 2000 The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush, ...

, some commentators suggested that the ability to approve of a candidate, but disapprove of his or her party affiliation or elements of his or her platform, might be quite important, and that satisfaction of citizens with the political system might well depend on such an

. A group of members of the United States Green Party, calling itself " Greens for Gore", made explicit the fact that they were voting for Gore but supported not the platform of the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

which nominated him, but that of their own Green Party, which they called on Gore to implement. This is an example of disapproval voting on an informal level, where voters found a way to approve of the candidate, while disapproving of party and platform – and of his key opponent,

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

. The

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experimented with a form of disapproval voting for multi-winner elections during the

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...

, in which voters could cross off the names of candidates they did not approve of, and those with the greatest approval (above a 50% threshold) were elected. Before that, the voting was but a sham: formally a disapproval system with only one name on the ballot, the voters weren't even supposed to enter the booth for striking it out to spoil or write in another candidate but immediately drop the collected ballot into the box (hence, no secret suffrage). It is also often said that votes for a "

protest candidate A protest vote (also called a blank, null, spoiled, or " none of the above" vote) is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or the current political system. Protest voting takes a variety of forms ...

" or a "

compromise candidate To compromise is to make a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand. In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving var ...

" can be viewed as disapproval votes, since the undesirable characteristics of the incumbent or alternative, respectively, can be said to be the voters' main concern. This of course is impossible to determine from the electoral results, as a vote intended to choose that candidate is indistinguishable in most systems from one that was intended to block or disapprove of another.

Arguments for and against

Given the prevalence of disapproval as a tool of government, including the

criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...

and diplomatic relations, some see voting less as a positive and voluntary choice of a desirable outcome than as a way to reduce losses. Other advocates of disapproval voting argue that they simply wish to extend to the citizen the powers that are already ceded to the executive, in terms of structure, e.g. many voters formally disapproving should tell the president when to exercise the veto. This is one of many arguments made for

deliberative democracy Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional ...

, and advocated by some in the US, e.g.

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

. Detractors of this view of civic life note that the complexity of widespread public consultation and letting the public vote down necessary but unpopular expenditures is contrary to the spirit of a representative democracy, and is an impractical and untrusting measure. In part this is a reaction to the negative view of politics, parties, and platforms inherent in any scheme of disapproval. Advocating disapproval or approval voting may be seen as taking a position on the tolerances versus preferences problem. Some propose that disapproval is more likely to trigger tolerance ideas of the voter, e.g. as in a poor woman choosing a lifetime mate, while approval is more likely to trigger preferences, e.g. as in shopping. This suggestion, like most advocacy of electoral systems, is controversial as it implies that voters cannot measure both tolerances and preferences for themselves, and come to conclusions that consider both. Another issue is that expressions of disapproval in many societies, especially in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

, are taken as anti-social. In the government of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, which is structured more as a bureaucracy than as a democracy, an official who rises a level is ratified by others at the level he is entering – no other candidates are presented but abstention as a protest is not uncommon. Support in this

ratification Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties inten ...

vote of less than 67–80% is taken as a strong disapproval – and most likely ends the rise of that individual at his current level. In any such structure, formal disapproval voting may lead to less honest outcomes, if the peer pressure not to be seen to formally disapprove of anyone is extreme.

Popular use

The best-known examples of the use of disapproval voting are on

s, e.g. ''

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'', ''

The Weakest Link ''Weakest Link'' (also known as ''The Weakest Link'') is a television game show which The Weakest Link (British game show), first appeared in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 14 August 2000 and originally ended on 31 March 2012 when its host ...

'', where it is used to eliminate one contestant at a time from the contest, or the variation used on ''

Boot Camp Boot camp may refer to: Training programs * Boot camp (correctional), a type of correctional facility for adolescents, especially in the U.S. penal system * Boot camp, a training camp for learning various types of skills ** Dev bootcamp, a de ...

'' where the eliminated contestant can "take one (other) out with him". (Note: the examples given here are better examples of

Coombs' method Coombs' method or the Coombs ruleGrofman, Bernard, and Scott L. Feld (2004"If you like the alternative vote (a.k.a. the instant runoff), then you ought to know about the Coombs rule,"''Electoral Studies'' 23:641-59. is a ranked voting system whic ...

than disapproval voting as described here).

No-confidence voting

A particular case of disapproval voting is the motion of no confidence. This is a motion of a legislature – rather than a vote of the electorate that elected it – expressing that it disapproves of the current executive, or of certain members of the executive. In the Westminster system, the person or persons who lose a motion of no confidence are normally expected to resign as a matter of

constitutional convention Constitutional convention may refer to: * Constitutional convention (political custom), an informal and uncodified procedural agreement *Constitutional convention (political meeting), a meeting of delegates to adopt a new constitution or revise an e ...

, and in the case of an executive a general election normally results, unless a replacement government (typically a new prime minister, who can subsequently appoint a new cabinet) can be approved in a motion of ''confidence''. This process is formalized in the United Kingdom by the

Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (c. 14) (FTPA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that for the first time set in legislation a default fixed election date for a general election to the Westminster parliament. Since the repeal ...

. No-confidence voting can only disapprove; it cannot be used to approve of any particular candidates. This decision is left to political discussions among those involved. The percentage which triggers a successful no-confidence vote can vary widely, from small values (like 20%) which allow minorities (particularly people with experience in the issue being voted) to decide the outcome, up to unanimity.

References