Approval Voting is even simpler than the procedures in Robert's Rules of Order.
Under Robert's Rules of Order the body can consider only one version of a motion at a time. A main motion comes to the floor. Someone proposes an amendment and gets a second. Now all discussion of the main motion stops and all discussion has to be on the amendment. Worse yet, people who intend to vote against the main motion even if amended get to vote on the amendment. This can create perverse voting patterns where gamers of the system can try to make the main motion worse in order to kill it.
Instead of voting on an amendment and then on the main motion, let the body do an Approval Vote on both versions of the motion at the same time. The version which gets the most approval wins. (Or they all fail if none get a majority or required supermajority.)
You still need to get the number of variations down to a reasonable number of course. This could be done by increasing the number of required seconds. Using Open Space Technology to generate the variants is another interesting possibility.
Changing the voting system at the government level is hard. You need to build familiarity and consensus first. I see two manageable routes for building familiarity:
1. Use Approval Voting for political polls. (That's what I am currently doing. By the way, I reset the count because I had to add some candidates to the Republican and Libertarian sides as well as remove some dropped out candidates for the Democratic side. Please retake! And tell your friends about it.)
2. Use Approval Voting for committees, unions, and social clubs. You can work for world peace at the hyper local level by giving people the experience of better voting systems. You can also make your respective organizations work more harmoniously.
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