The flaw in every voting system

#some3

0:00 Intro
3:11 Definitions
6:44 Proof
11:39 Arrow's theorem
13:25 Approval voting
17:03 Outro

Credits:
Thumbnail by Alžběta Volhejnová

pictures: MidJourney, Wikipedia, Internet

[acidangel]

This is not a flaw in every voting system. It's a flaw in every voting system that has only one winner. In a country like Finland we have 200 seats in the parliament. We could fill all the seats based on how many votes each party got. Any party that got more that 0.5% of votes would get at least one member into the parliament. Problem solved. No reason to just have one seat like the presidential election. This is not the middle ages anymore.

[ericsjoberg]

In my Swedish municipality we have public digital “suggestion box” for political ideas. An idea requires 100 citizen votes to be debated by the council. There is no negative voting however, which makes the system unreliable. There was a case (replace some car roads with parks) that got 100+ votes, but an anti-case (do not replace roads with parks) got over 3000 votes. Both had to be debated as separate topics in the council, which the media found hilarious.

[OL]

So many people are unaware of the very existence of voting theory (aka social choice). This should be taught in school because our entire society relies on how much trust people put on election results. And this trust is eroding very fast

[ClayShentrup]

thankfully, voting methods like approval voting, score voting, and star voting are extremely resistant to strategy. this is explained in the excellent book "gaming the vote" by william poundstone.

[quelfth]

I love how the US electoral college does not satisfy these requirements to be considered a "reasonable voting system."

[diffpizza]

This should be taught on high school math, so everybody knows about the flaws of voting systems

[eljaytu]

One problem with these mathematical approaches is that they assume voters have a ranked preference. In reality, voters typically do not have that. The average voter might classify their candidates in 3 tiers: preferred, acceptable and objectionable, with little differentiation within the categories. Any further ordering is basically random (or noise, from an information point of view). This is why systems like approval voting have an advantage: they more closely capture voter preference.

[FeuervogelIra]

To be fair, the random voting system was used in one of the longest lasting voting systems ever used: the venetian voting system.

[Harkmagic]

I want to see an analysis of an up or down voting system.

Each voter gets exactly one vote. They can either choose to vote for a candidate they like increasing the candidate's vote total by one, an up vote, or vote against a candidate that they dislike and decrease that candidate's vote total by one, a down vote.

Inspired by the common complaint of people feeling like they must vote for the lesser of two evils, this instead gives the option to vote against the greater evil and gives candidates that people truly believe in to rise up.

[paologat]

Actually, Arrow’s Theorem only applies to ordinal voting systems (where voters can only express their order of preference). Cardinal voting systems (where you can also say how much you like and dislike any given option) are a different matter. And indeed, price formation in an ideal market can be considered a cardinal voting system.

[weecl]

Idea: use a voting system which is simply a culmination of the results of 10 or more established voting systems. collect a ranked list of a select number of fruits and convert that into every voting system’s input. Then, use ANOTHER voting system on those results until a winner is found. The only downside is all the confusion and red tape!😁

[fatalexception]

What happens if you ask everyone to vote not knowing what the voting system is, and then randomly select a reasonable voting system after all the ballots are cast?

[koacado]

I saw the title real fast and thought it said "vomiting" and quickly made up my mind about this being a video explaining how we evolved vomiting as primates and how that helped us evolve

[nancys]

My sisters and I took turns picking ice cream flavors. I loved mint and chip but I never chose it because I knew my sister would, so I always got black cherry. I got my favorites twice.

[ekki]

The problem lies in thinking that a single winner-takes-all vote can comprise the entirety of democracy. There's a reason voting is considered the minimum responsibility of a citizen.

[patrickwienhoft]

"This was supposed to be a random fruit, not banana" got me :D

[MrBluelightzero]

What if we used science to take the candidates and construct a randomised monster candidate based on a ratio of all votes?
Avonananut?
Bacocodo?
Cocadona?

[tylerian]

3:18 And thus I found out once again that my ideas are not unique. Yet, I'm all the happier to learn this concept isn't so unheard of.

[x--.]

Simplicity is _not_ a flaw. It's a form of transparency that allows people of all levels of intelligence to feel confident the outcome of a vote is legitimate. This is a challenge with so many alternative voting systems, if it adds any sort of complexity it begins to feel like the system is being gamed to harm one group or another.

Unfortunately, the people who feel harmed are also the most likely to get very angry and frustrated.

I love the idea of instant-run off voting but I see most people I know uncomfortable with this "new fangled" idea because it is way more complicated relative to first-past the post.

The only reasonable choice I've been able to come up with that preserves legitimacy while granting better results is a combination system: ranked-choice primaries but two candidate run-offs for the final, separate, vote. *You cannot underestimate the importance* of having a system that *feels* legitimate because it is transparent and easy to understand.

And I think most people would prefer to have the cost of multiple-round voting to feel, in their bones, that the system is legitimate.

[spacelem]

I was watching this going "I hope he mentions the Approval Voting system..." and you did!

I live in Scotland, and yes, I really wish we could throw out the disastrous FPTP for our UK parliament elections, but at least we get AMS for our devolved parliament, and STV for our local elections. But we cling on to it for many reasons (the big parties have no incentive to change, ignorance about how voting works, belief that it gives better outcomes etc.). Glad to see it's just as disliked by voting theory experts.