Election (via approval voting) of UN secretary general

The Secretary-general of the United Nations is elected by a process with complicated rules, but which in practice (since the complicated exceptions rarely arise) is essentially approval voting.

The election of Ban Ki-Moon in 2006

There were 15 countries voting, with the possible votes being "approve," "disapprove," or "no-opinion" on each candidate. (But apparently the words "encourage" and "discourage" were felt to be more diplomatic than "approve" and "disapprove.") The votes were as follows (extracted from http://www.unsg.org/wordpress/archives/170). Ban's vote was 14 encouraging and 1 "no opinion." The result indicates that Ban was not opposed by any of the five permanent members (P), which is important because they have the power (if they choose to exert it) to veto anything the UN does, including if it elects somebody Secretary General. All five remaining candidates received at least one discouraging vote from permanent member(s):

Total 39+35+16=90=6×15 scores for the 6 candidates from the 15 voters. The average number of approvals per ballot was 2.6=39/15.

Ban's election was then "confirmed" by the full General Assembly. [The setup is rather similar to the election (basically by 3-level range voting) of the Doge in Renaissance Venice, followed by his confirmation (or, in theory, rejection) by the assembly of the people.]

Incidentally, Donald Saari raised the fear that approval voting would in practice "degenerate" to plurality voting. This fear is seen, at least in this high-stakes example, to have been utter garbage.

The (preceding) election of Kofi Annan in 1996

Farhan Haq
Inter Press Service English News Wire
12-14-1996
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 13 (IPS) -- Kofi Annan, a career U.N.
staffer and currently head of the United Nations' peacekeeping
department, will be the world body's next secretary general, the
U.N. Security Council confirmed today.
The 15-member Council approved Annan, a Ghanaian diplomat who
is undersecretary general for peacekeeping, by a unanimous vote in
a secret "straw poll" before formally voting to recommend him to
the 185-nation General Assembly as the next U.N. chief. The
Assembly is expected to vote Dec. 16 by consensus for Annan...

List of UN secretary generals

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