Majority Approval Voting

Majority Approval Voting (MAV) is a modern, evaluative version of Bucklin voting. Voters rate each candidate into one of a predefined set of ratings or grades, such as the letter grades "A", "B", "C", "D", and "F". As with any Bucklin system, first the top-level ("A") votes for each candidate are tallied, and if one candidate has a majority, they win. If not, the lower levels are added to the tallies, one at a time (ie, "B", then "C", etc.) until some candidate or candidates have a majority. If there are more than one candidates with a majority, the one of those who had the highest tally at the next level up (previous step) is the winner. If there are more than one candidates with a majority at the first step, then the one with the largest majority is the winner.

The grades or ranks for this system could be numbers instead of letter grades. Terms such as "graded MAV" or "rated MAV" can be used to distinguish these possibilities if necessary. In either case, descriptive labels such as "A:Unconditional support" are recommended.

This system was promoted and named due to the confusing array of Bucklin and Median proposals. It is intended to be a relatively generic, simple Bucklin option with good resistance to the chicken dilemma. It was named by a poll on the electorama mailing list in June 2013.