HackerTube

THE VIDEO SHELF · voting systems

How our voting system (and IRV) betrays your favourite candidate

The Center for Election Science explains favorite betrayal in instant-runoff voting: in some elections, ranking your favorite first can cause your least favorite to win. It contrasts this with plurality voting's spoiler problem.

Watch & explore the libraryYouTube ↗

Why HN readers recommended it

The standard link in ranked-choice voting threads to show IRV does not eliminate the spoiler effect.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
The Center for Election Science
Topic
voting systems
Format
explainer
Level
intro
HN recommenders in dataset
5
HN mentions in dataset
19
Recommendation years in dataset
2014–2023

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • This issue has been solved by math PhD's and political scientists who've studied the matter for decades. www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv IRV can elect X even if Y was preferred to X by an arbitrarily huge majority and got more first-place votes than X. www.electology.org/core-support Regarding favorite betrayal, …

    ClayShentrup on Hacker News · 2014-11
    In Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize

  • This is a shorter video from the same source as the other reply that deals specifically with IRV: [VIDEO] >Unless I misunderstand IRV, there is no "vote stealing" due to your vote automatically dropping off to your next-preferred candidate. The problem is that they drop …

    aninhumer on Hacker News · 2016-11
    In Show HN: Mest – Place to talk with those you disagree with

  • I always recommend this pair of videos when discussing STAR voting vs other alternative systems. The first video is an easy-to-follow explanation of how spoiler effects can happen in both plurality voting and IRV [1]. In the second [2], the guy who created Star voting …

    user234683 on Hacker News · 2019-10
    In Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in New York City

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

Keep exploring