Why Democracy Is Mathematically Impossible
VeritasiumCited 6× on HN, 2024-2026
10.1M views · 2 years ago · explainer · evergreen
Veritasium explains why no voting system can be perfectly fair, drawing on Arrow's theorem and the work of Eric Maskin. It looks at problems with systems like first-past-the-post and ranked-choice voting.
Linked when someone needs a quick accessible source for the claim that every voting method has flaws.
6:23How We Should Vote (Range Voting)
Undefined Behavior
43K views • 10 years ago
14:03Simulating alternate voting systems
Primer
4.5M views • 6 years ago
6:18Animated Voting Methods
Unify The Vote
16K views • 9 years ago
6:31Why Your Vote Doesn't Count
CGP Grey
7.9M views • 15 years ago
3:35How our voting system (and IRV) betrays your favourite candidate
The Center for Election Science
35K views • 12 years ago
4:27The Voting System That Should Replace Every Election
CGP Grey
4.7M views • 15 years ago
6:31You Can Win the Presidency With 22% of the Vote
CGP Grey
8.2M views • 15 years ago
19:55Why was Biden's win calculated to be ONE IN A QUADRILLION?
Stand-up Maths
1.3M views • 5 years ago
34:00Math's Fundamental Flaw
Veritasium
30.8M views • 5 years ago
15:11Bayes theorem, the geometry of changing beliefs
3Blue1Brown
6M views • 6 years ago
58:30What if Current Foundations of Mathematics are Inconsistent? | Vladimir Voevodsky
Institute for Advanced Study
57K views • 14 years ago
17:46Why do Biden's votes not follow Benford's Law?
Stand-up Maths
3.7M views • 5 years ago
10:37The Bayesian Trap
Veritasium
4.5M views • 9 years ago
8:34Was YOUR vote counted? (feat. homomorphic encryption) - Numberphile
Numberphile
198K views • 10 years ago
32:32The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything
Veritasium
13.1M views • 1 year ago
57:03HACKENBUSH: a window to a new world of math
Owen Maitzen
562K views • 5 years ago
48:55Pythagoras' theorem (a) | Math History | NJ Wildberger
Insights into Mathematics
517K views • 15 years ago
43:23AI Ethics, Impossibility Theorems and Tradeoffs - Chris Stucchio | Crunch 2018
CraftHub Events
2K views • 7 years ago
18:16Do these scatter plots reveal fraudulent vote-switching in Michigan?
Stand-up Maths
906K views • 5 years ago
23:51Why is this number everywhere?
Veritasium
12.1M views • 2 years ago
6 comments from Hacker News
There is actually extensive mathematical history to fair voting, the output of which is super not in use, and of which I do find plenty of the alternative systems more representative: ▶ this video I do think regular variety elections are generally representative though. I just also see value in keeping these asterisks in mind.
Yeah. It's complicated. See Veritasium's "Why Democracy is Mathematically Impossible" ▶ this video And also Idiocracy. This one is becoming more relevant. In all countries and all races.
FPTP is bad but other methods are similarly flawed: ▶ this video Keeping a democracy requires people to understand it as well. At least in US it seems they'd rather elect a dictator wannabe who clearly said he wanted to be dictator for a day than elect a woman.
> EU citizens voted for this. I'm growing pretty tired of this rhetoric / rhetorical sleight of hand, but maybe this is a reasonable opportunity to discuss it: - not all citizens of a jurisdiction are eligible for voting: in this case, cursory search suggests only 400M (88.8%) of 450M were eligible - seems a bit too high to me, but let's roll with it regardless - not all who are eligible actually vote: voting in the EU parliamentary elections, which is what EU citizens can actually vote on, like most elsewhere, is not mandatory; it's a right, not a duty: turnout was 50.74%, and that is of the eligible population, so really just 45.1% (203M) - most voting systems are mathematically unfair [0]: extensively researched, doesn't quite apply necessarily in this case though as per the next bit - several key positions in the various bodies are elected indirectly: same here in the EU, at which point all bets are off - laws, regulations, and policies are not voted for or against by citizens: same here in the EU too, nobody could have even possibly voted for this in the literal sense It's a run of the mill representative system and I think it'd serve discussions a great deal if this was acknowledged properly. Surely it's agreeable at least that this wouldn't be such news if people were all just completely on board as the sentence "EU citizens voted for this." implies when read naively and literally. I really don't see a point to this phrase other than inciting others. And before anyone
I'm not so sure if putting down a vote for one candidate over many others every few years suffices as democracy though to begin with. [0] [0] ▶ this video
The Pollyanna view of ranked-choice voting presented on TV doesn't really work out in the real world. Veritasium video on voting systems: ▶ this video link