15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete • Hacker News Board

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#781

Post by hannasanarion » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

Scramblejams wrote: post #694

hannasanarion wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which were also predominantly rural. There was no country on earth with a majority urban population until well into the 20th century.

Nobody said cities needed a majority to inspire fear of the way they concentrated political power. The founders’ concerns about that are well-documented. A cursory search yielded a decent starting point: https://www.planetizen.com/node/18841

And nowhere did the founders say that the electoral college was intended to counteract it.

Unlike most people today trying to come up with justifications for an obviously broken system, the founders knew that minority rule is worse than majority rule.

In every document where the framers discuss "tyranny of the majority", it is clear that their solution is not minority rule, it is CONSENSUS. That is why the most important functions of government: constitutional changes, impeachments, censorship, rule changes, and veto overrides, require supermajorities.

You don't overcome tyranny of the majority by letting minorities win. That's just regular tyranny.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#782

Post by hannasanarion » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #691

hannasanarion wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do you think that tyranny of the minority is better?

That's a false dichotomy. The alternative isn't tyranny of the minority, it's a system that takes account of the views of everyone, by forcing candidates to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate.

We are talking about the electoral college, which enables tyranny of the minority.

Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#783

Post by specialist » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

ShamelessC wrote: post #320

hyperpape wrote: post #302

There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest. If you live in Wyoming, the electora…

I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g. California) anyway?

I predict a presidential popular vote would have a moderating effect. Meaning more voters would be targeted.

With FPTP, each side tries to have the smallest winning coalition. This results in more competitive races. So every vote would matter.

Said another way, our current unfair gerrymandering worsens partisanship.

Said yet another, when my local city council went from at-large positions to districts based, so kinda the opposite of from electoral college to presidential popular vote, candidate platforms went from "appeal city wide" mush to "better appeal to my district".

(A better moderator would be to change from FPTP to approval voting or ranked choice voting. But that's another thread.)

--

But to your point, in practical terms, with modern get out the vote (GOTV) technology and strategies, most every voter is already targeted. They're certainly accounted for.

As the de facto head of their parties, presidential candidates are expected to do well every where, to help with down ballot races.

As an extreme example, HRC 2016 was criticized for running up her margin in "safe" areas. But that's expected (demanded) of national (and statewide) candidates by the locals.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#784

Post by jshowa3 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #779

hyperpape wrote: post #302

There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest. If you live in Wyoming, the electora…

It is not there to protect small states, it is there to protect from super large states. As in, no matter how big you get or how lopsided your political apparatus is the state cannot absolutely tip the balance. a popular vote presidency would be a disaster for the US, the illusion that votes matter would be completely destroyed at that level. it is like the difference of comparing a state only lottery to the multi st…

a popular vote presidency would be a disaster for the US, the illusion that votes matter would be completely destroyed at that level.

This is completely false. Having a popular vote would at least adequately represent, mathematically, the demographics of the US citizenry and what they want in a candidate. Now, FPTP is not the greatest voting scheme, I would prefer some sort of rank choice voting, but at least you would get a statistical representation of the populace with FPTP.

The electoral college is such an antiquated, outdated system that only favors fringe views.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#785

Post by caseysoftware » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #695

caseysoftware wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One aspect of the Electoral College is that it's a built in corruption firewall. Right now, if an election system is "compromised" (electronically, corrupt officials, etc), it will affect that precinct, the local elections, possibly the state-wide races, and rarely the Presidential. With a simple majority vote, a compromise anywhere in the system - adding or removing votes - impacts the system as a whole.

Other democratic countries are doing just fine without an electoral college.

Most of which are Parliamentary systems which are very similar structurally.

In those cases, you don't directly elect a Prime Minister either. You elect an MP in little winner-take-all elections and then the party (or coalition) gets together and elect the PM from their own ranks.

It's not quite 1:1 with an Electoral College but it's not direct democracy either.

Which countries are direct democracies?

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#786

Post by hannasanarion » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #671

hannasanarion wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Electoral College lets the minority choose the president against the will of the Majority. That is called tyranny of the minority. I want to know why you think that's a good thing.

So, for one, I don't - I'm mildly in favor of direct popular votes combined with some form of runoff voting (either IRV, STV, or approval voting). But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disen…

> But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area.

This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either.

If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidential Candidate has ever gone stumping for those sweet sweet Wyoming voters?

Because it doesn't empower small states. It doesn't empower big states. It empowers closely contested states.

The electoral college makes no sense, it was not designed this way, the designers tried to get rid of it after they saw how it was being abused.

It's non-democratic, nonsensical, and there has been ~75% support for abolishing it for over 100 years but politicians have been holding off because it makes elections easier for them to fight because it lets them ignore most of the voters.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#787

Post by jshowa3 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

exclusiv wrote: post #605

delecti wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this pointed out, and absolutely do not see it as a problem. What's wrong with politicians paying more attention to the needs of more people? They're going to campaign somewhere , why should they pay more attention to Cleveland, Ohio (metro area population ~2m) than Los Angeles ( city population 3m, metro population over 13m)?

What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that you generally can't just appeal to 1 or 2 regions and win. In a goal of preserving the union, it's better to have a system that pushes cross-regional appeal than a system based strictly on number of votes IMO.

What's the point of having "cross regional appeal" if you are appealing to virtually no one?

This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#788

Post by caseysoftware » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #719

caseysoftware wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most of the show. If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of them aren't new and some of them are decades old. Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking "why?"

> After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most of the show. Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely because you are inside the bubble? A political equivalent to "let them eat cake". As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give somewhere soon at s…

Valid line of reasoning but I'm 10 years out from that world specifically because the bubble was/is ugly.

I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.

(And those other approaches aren't usually good.)

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#789

Post by kd5bjo » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #776

kd5bjo wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure of the Federal government is fundamentally geared towards mediating the relationships between the various states, as that was its original purpose. Actual governance of the populace was the purview of state government. Over time, however, decisions about domestic law have increasingly been made at the Federal level. At this point, the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution is used to justify alm…

Thank you for the very reasonable and rational explanation! That does broaden my interpretation of vturner’s comment. Your comment seems broadly true and open minded as well. I have a couple of questions, possibly from a devil’s advocate perspective, purely for the sake of discussion because I’m curious: When you say the government was originally geared to mediate the states and that real governance was supposed to b…

Unfortunately, Aside from identifying general trends, I haven’t looked into the issues enough to hold any strong opinions, nor am I in a position to cite any specifics without significant research. I think you may be right about increased interconnectedness naturally leading to a larger federal role in everyday governance.

As far as the supremacy clause goes, it’s necessary for the treaty to work. The states are agreeing to give up some of their sovereign rights to be executed by the federal government instead, in the interests of the union. The bulk of the Constitution describes exactly those rights that the states are giving up, and this clause confirms that they can’t pass legislation to opt out of individual federal decisions they don’t like that fall within those bounds. Without it, the federal government would in practice only be able to make suggestions— a situation that led to bankruptcy under the Articles of Confederation.

I’m actually more concerned about the shift in power from the legislature to the executive. As the role of the federal government has grown, it feels like every executive agency has grown its own miniature legislature and judiciary that are primarily beholden to the executive. Agency regulations are law, so why aren’t they drafted and approved by an arm of the relevant congressional committee?

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#790

Post by bena » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

It's like we've been trying to destroy the electoral college almost since it's inception. And every step makes it worse.

The electoral college was supposed to be a sort of bulwark between the public and the highest office in the nation.

State governments choose their electors. Those electors are supposed to be tasked with choosing the best among the candidates for president and vice-president.

But instead, state governments threw that decision to the public. Effectively making the electoral college a proxy popularity vote for a state. And that's a big fucking ask of any person. Choose the person who is capable of running the country and making all these decisions, whose policies will guide your nation to prosperity, etc.

Hell man, I'm just trying to get my budget straight. Do I look like I have time in between everything else I do to also seriously investigate every single candidate? And I'm not a complete moron either. And I know I cannot actually make a completely informed decision here. But I know complete morons. And they get a vote just like me.