the only real answer. idk why people think the voting system is a magical black box. to add, the top comment in the following link is paul graham showing the code for the voting system https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417
People think it is a magical black box because the code in the parent comment, and in the thread you linked, is three and a half years old, and HN does not run these days on exactly the same code that was open-sourced in news.arc.