Uploaded November 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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Aaron Hamlin (@aaronfhamlin) is the executive director of The Center for Election Science, a non-profit focused on advancing better voting methods so the people can more meaningfully impact and benefit the world through democracy. Guess what, the US voting system was recently declared an oligarchy by a reputable Princeton study, meaning the people at large didn't actually influence policy, even though they're voting. We'll get into all this and more.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

- How US elections work and why the system is so bad
- Why approval voting is the best system possible, and science to back it up
- The reason today's voting system leads to worse candidates and worse outcomes
- What Trump did to influence the election and how it changes politics forever
- Why winner take all voting increases extremism and reduce voter turnout
- How other countries think about democracy and better ways to do it
- Would random elections lead to better outcomes
- Why politics get corrupted with corporate money
- What you can do to make your vote count
- The reason Aaron is excited about clean meat
- Why better voting really is the most important problem

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