HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Why Democracy Is Mathematically Impossible Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Why Democracy Is Mathematically Impossible

92 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
Cited on HN 6 times, 2024–2026, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Linked when someone needs a quick accessible source for the claim that every voting method has flaws.

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.

“most voting systems are mathematically unfair [0]” (HN, 2025)

6 citations · Explainers

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@perching_aix Jul 2025 Cites it
on HN thread EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google
Read more
> 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
Cited for mathematical unfairness of voting systems
@thisisit Sep 2025 Cites it
on HN thread EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies
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.
Shows that all voting methods have flaws
@perching_aix Apr 2026 Cites it
on HN thread U.S. exempts oil industry from protecting Gulf animals, for 'national security'
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.
Mathematical history of fair voting and alternative systems

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close