I think that problem sort of fades in the aggregate: given 100 people who order the candidates A-C-B, A will get 100 votes, B will get zero, and C will get some

I think that problem sort of fades in the aggregate: given 100 people who order the candidates A-C-B, A will get 100 votes, B will get zero, and C will get some value in between, because some people will go for it, and some won't. If you have a large number of voters, I expect approval voting to behave very similarly to score voting.