The main point of IRV is to allow me to say "I'd actually prefer third party C, but if it comes down to main parties A or B (which it probably will), I guess I

The main point of IRV is to allow me to say "I'd actually prefer third party C, but if it comes down to main parties A or B (which it probably will), I guess I prefer B". Under approval, I have two options: * Vote for B and C. My vote for C is guarenteed to fail because I'm also giving a vote to B, which was likely to be better than them in the first place. There's no way C can win if everyone who votes for them also votes for B. * Vote for C alone. This increases C's chance of beating B, but it means that if C doesn't win I now had no say in whether A or B won. Politics isn't black and white. There isn't a set of candidates I'm ok with vs a set I am not. My preferences are a ranked list, and any system that doesn't let me express those preferences is, in my opinion, worse than IRV, even if it does produce some theoretically sub-optimal results in some weird edge cases. EDIT: > Maybe in practice people would only ever approve one candidate and the situation wouldn't change, but I think it's a least a good small step forward. I didn't see that bit before. Yes sorry, if we're talking about in comparison to FPTP, I'm all for approval voting.