I used to think this, and then I tried describing it to a room full of educated people -- some with advanced degrees -- and persuading them it was better than plurality for the system we were setting up for a nonprofit board.
It's certainly possible I was the point of failure, but everyone kept getting concerned about each person having multiple votes
"Like, what if someone cheats and gives all their votes to one person?" "You can't do that, it's approval voting, you can cast one approval vote for each candidate" "But that means each person can vote for multiple candidates!" "Yes. Every person uses their ballot to indicate which candidates they find acceptable." "But what if I like one candidate more than all the others?" "Then you can either vote for them and everyone else you think would be OK, or just vote for them." "But what if someone else votes for all the people I don't like." "How is that different from people voting for a candidate you don't like now?" "Well, they can only pick one candidate I don't like now."
I understand no voting system is perfect, but I was not expecting this one to be such a hard sell.
Trump won because Republicans loved him, whereas most Democrats were pretty lukewarm on Clinton.
If I rated Bernie 5 stars, but Clinton only 3, it would have merely made a Trump victory even more secure.
I suspect we're so conditioned to treating votes as exclusionary/zero-sum, the mere idea of one person ticking multiple boxes can easily trigger instincts for fairness / cheater detection.
That seems to be a really bad idea if you want minority representation.
How would this play out in a racist 1950s scenario?
One can easily envision scenarios where the milquetoast centrists defeat stronger positions that would otherwise have won in a two-party, lesser-evil scenario; on the other hand, it could just as easily break the other direction.
I'd argue that incentives towards consensus building are net wins for minority voters (in all senses of the word), because it puts the maximum number of voters in play for each candidate. Right now, there is a very real sense in which Texas Democrats and California Republicans have very poor representation; 49% may as well round to zero. (Proportional representation is also worthy of consideration here.) Putting those votes in play for third parties and independents makes candidates more responsive to the whole electorate rather than chasing a small number of swing voters.
Even if I manage to gain 70% support of voters, it will all be for naught if my opponent opens an even bigger tent at 75%. It shifts us away from thinking of politics as a zero-sum game.