Our primary reform
Our primary reform
Improve California's primaries with one sentence on the ballot
After a governor's primary drew 61 candidates and allowed voters to pick just one, California Approves filed a statewide initiative to change that. The Approval Voting for Primary Elections Act finds where Californians agree by giving voters the freedom to support every candidate they approve of. Pledge your support now, and we'll follow up when the official petition is ready to sign.
More Choice
Fair Competition
Better Representation
Same ballot. One sentence changes everything.
Try marking both ballots below with candidates you'd support in a five-way primary. Notice how the first ballot forces a single choice and how the second one leaves you free to choose one or several.
Vote for one
Selecting a second candidate is not allowed.
Vote for AS MANY as you approve of
No limit. Support as many as you genuinely want.
In our current system, needing to guess who's “electable" can pressure any voter to abandon their favorite candidates, even when they have no competition for their party's support. Approval Voting removes that pressure everywhere.
Same ballot. More choice, that's it.
Mark all you support.
An election should measure how many people actually support a candidate.
When voters can only pick one candidate, we can't know who else they'd support, so we never really know how many people actually support any candidate. Approval Voting fixes that. By giving voters the freedom to approve every candidate they want, all support can be added up, revealing how much overall support each candidate truly has. Giving voters more freedom creates fair competition for broad support and delivers better representation.
Mark every candidate you approve of
No limit, and no obligation. Mark one candidate or several. Just vote your conscience. No pressure to pick only one “electable" candidate.
Approvals add up, they don't divide
Approving one candidate never takes away from another. The election is no longer a zero-sum game. Candidates can share good ideas because they can share supporters, focusing them on values that speak to most of the electorate.
The most-approved candidates advance
Because voters have unrestricted choice in the primary, broad support is no longer punished just for overlapping with others. The candidates with the widest genuine support actually advance, and the winner arrives with a real mandate to represent more than just their base.
Picking sides shouldn't come before solving problems.
The result: less division, more progress on what we actually agree on.
Help bring Approval Voting to California.
Pledge your support and we'll follow up with next steps.
Your vote should count for who you actually support, not just who you think can win.
Too many people vote for whoever seems “safe,” afraid their real favorite doesn’t stand a chance. That fear becomes the reason they lose. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: elections that reflect who voters feared losing to, not who they actually wanted.
This isn't hypothetical. It happened in St. Louis, Missouri, before the city switched to Approval Voting.
was enough to win St. Louis's 2017 mayoral primary outright, with support fractured across three other candidates, who together may have reflected what most voters actually wanted.
St. Louis primary voters approved more than one candidate in 2025, proof that "just pick one" never captured the full picture of their support.
of St. Louis voters who supported a lesser-known 2025 mayoral candidate also approved of someone else — preferences the old system would have never let them show.
Already proven to work.
Approval Voting has already been used to elect leaders in multiple places across the country, and it’s the way many people already make group decisions. When a group picks a meeting time, nobody votes for just one slot. Everyone marks every time that works, and the option most people can make wins. Approval Voting brings that same simple logic to the ballot.
Fargo, North Dakota adopted it for city elections in 2020. St. Louis followed in 2021, using it for city primaries. In 2025, Utah’s Forward Party used it to fill a vacant state Senate seat. Each time, the process was the same: mark every candidate you support, and the most-approved candidates win.
Here’s what that looked like in St. Louis:
Winning share of the vote in St. Louis's fractured, seven-candidate mayoral primary.
St. Louis voters approved switching their municipal primary elections to Approval Voting.
The leading mayoral candidate advanced with broad approval, up from just 30% in the fractured 2017 primary race she didn't win.
St. Louis voters appreciated Approval Voting’s simplicity — clear and easy to use, no learning curve.
The simplest change that works.
Every candidate for state and congressional office still appears on one familiar ballot. Every registered voter can still vote for any of them. This reform simply gives voters the freedom to support all the candidates they like in the primary. Nothing else about how elections are run has to change, and nothing new has to be bought, built, or learned.
What this act does not do
- Does not restrict who can run or who can vote
- Does not change the ballot layout or how the general election works
- Does not require new voting machines or software
- Does not add cost for counties to administer
What this act does
- Gives voters the freedom to mark every candidate they support
- Reveals how much support each candidates really has, instead of hiding it
- Advances the most widely approved candidates
- Gives winners a stronger mandate to represent more voters
Same ballot. More choice, that's it.
Mark all you support.
Ready to bring Approval Voting to California?
Every pledge moves our reform closer to the 2028 ballot. Add your name below, and we'll follow up with next steps.
You're on the list.
Thanks for pledging your support. Watch your inbox for the official petition.
Back to topThe People Behind This
California Approves is powered by volunteers, organizers, and everyday voters who believe our primaries can work better. Here's why some of us got involved.
Alan Savage
“ I got into this work because I saw that how we vote shapes everything else in our society. Asking ‘Who is your favorite?’ creates division and dysfunction, feeding apathy and extremism. Asking ‘Which candidates do you like?’ finds common ground. I dream of a democracy where we disagree honestly, elect leaders who represent most of us, and steadily build on what unites us. ”
Amanda Mahlendorf
“ I believe elections should invite competition without making voters fear that more choice will allow less representative candidates to succeed. And when voters support more than one candidate, our system should be able to count that plainly, so we can elect officeholders who represent more of us. Voters should be able to understand the outcomes of elections, and accept them as fair, even when their favorites lose. ”
Taylor Fisher
“ As a mathematician, I know that the most revolutionary innovations are often based on the simplest of ideas. Instead of ‘choose one,’ Approval voting's ‘choose all you like’ will advance candidates who unite us, rather than divide us. I want every Californian to have a meaningful choice in who represents them, and this initiative finally delivers that. ”
Arend Peter Castelein
“ I became a voting advocate because too much of our politics is focused on which candidates are "electable" rather than who has the best ideas. The California Approves Initiative fixes that problem in the simplest way possible, and allows us to finally have politicians who represent the people. ”
Nikolas Hall
“ Fair elections start with honest votes and end with unifying leaders. ”
Ariel Gardiner
“ I believe Approval Voting is a well-overdue change in our electoral process that will realign the incentives for elected representatives and political candidates. To be successful they will need to appeal to a broader base which will better reflect the American values we share across demographics and party lines. ”