After successfully crowdfunding over $12,000, The Center for Election Science has delivered the first animated explainer video on Approval Voting. For the unaware, Approval Voting is a long-needed solution to our vote-for-one method. Our status-quo method is vulnerable to vote splitting and causes people to fear wasting their vote when they pick a favorite perceived as less than viable.

Approval Voting is really easy. The only difference is the ballot directions. Instead of “vote for one,” it’s “vote for one or more”. No complicated ranking. That’s it. This small change puts a handle on vote splitting, and it lets voters fearlessly pick their favorites regardless of viability. Now, because of this video, the idea of Approval Voting is finally easy to share.

Plus the video is fun to watch. We collaborated with the animation company Thought Bubble to produce the video, and we’re proud of the results. After just over a week, the video on the Electology YouTube channel has over 1K views. The video on the animation company’s channel, Thought Bubble, went viral climbing over 14K views in less than 24 hours after being posted to UpWorthy.

We’ve entered the video in the Looking@Democracy contest funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The contest has entrants offer solutions to problems in US government. Because of the video’s high quality and message, the Center sees itself as a competitor for the contest’s top $25,000 prize. If you vote for us and share our entry page with others, you could help us get an extra $5,000. Either way, the video is expected to educate thousands on Approval voting. And that’s a sure win.