This is actually completely backwards. IRV favors extremists whereas approval voting tends to find the most broadly appealing candidate.
The ballot is approval style voting, you can vote for X of Y candidates.
If they're just adding up each candidate's votes, that's not how approval is supposed to be tabulated in a multi-winner context (which is more complicated); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting
Approval voting is a single winner system.