The Voting System That's Actually Too Good for Politicians to Allow
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN's default link for explaining STV in any thread on voting reform, ranked choice or gerrymandering.
What it is
CGP Grey explains the Single Transferable Vote, a proportional ranked-ballot system, and why politicians have little incentive to adopt it. It is a short animated explainer of how multi-winner ranked voting works.
Recommended by 7 HN commenters across 7 different months, 2015 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec CivBase · 2017-12 · on “Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts”
Gerrymandering is a problem because we have a poor voting system. I'm not sure if a single transferrable vote (STV) is the best system, but it would significantly reduce the benefit of gerrymandering (and probably result in better candidates from both parties). CGP Grey did a great video on STV: [this video]
Recommends LoonyBalloony · 2017-02 · on “Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream”
Elections were (IMO) meant to be bloodless revolutions. its just the 1% has captured both primary political parties. Also, the flawed first past the post electoral system discourages competition (IMO to keep it cheaper for the 1% to own the whole process). I'll post some videos from people smarter then me: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [this video] [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends orthecreedence · 2017-04 · on ““Restoring Internet Freedom” Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [pdf]”
Support anyone who wants to get rid of FPTP voting and introduce a more representative voting system (ranked choice, for example). Right now, people have to vote for the least of two shitty candidates. Instead, we could vote for the ones who represent us the most without worrying about who will actually win. This won't fix corporate corruption, which is the underlying cause of the attack on net neutrality, but it will certainly make representatives more beholden to their voters. [this video]
Recommends thelasthuman · 2018-11 · on “The Second Half of Watergate Was Bigger, Worse, and Forgotten by the Public”
Elections are supposed to be bloodless revolutions. If you can't effect change through the electoral system, then the non violent solution is to revolutionize how we vote. Relevant videos (IMO) First Past The Post Voting - [LINK] Range Voting - [LINK] Single Transferable Vote - [this video] Alternative Vote - [LINK] Mixed-Member Proportional Representation - [LINK] Bonus video This video will make you angry - [LINK]
Recommends khr · 2018-12 · on “Commandeering Australian citizens to become spies”
erentz was probably referring to the single transferable vote system ( [LINK] ), which uses a ranked ballot in elections and results in relatively proportional representation. CGP grey explains it pretty well: [this video]
Recommends lpolzer · 2019-03 · on “DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System”
Now if only they would introduce something like Single Transferable Vote (entertaining CGPGrey video: [this video] ), or another more effective voting system. Probably won't happen though, as it would seriously shake up politics as we know it.
Recommends s_dev · 2019-10 · on “Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in New York City”
Ireland uses this appraoch. We call it STV. STV Explained -- [this video] It just a better democracy because it's more representative. It's solves the "wasted vote" problem people have with democracy and why many democracies result in a two party system. This way it ensures your vote is counted and multiple parties exist.
Cites mtgx · 2015-12 · on “Let Math Save Our Democracy”
Multi-winner ranked choice voting would do much more good to the democracy of US than ensuring the Democrat and Republican seats are "fair", and it would also solve the gerrymandering problem as a consequence: [LINK] [this video]