Hacker News Reader

Comment by _fizz_buzz_ | Hacker News Reader

> That's as loud of a mandate as can be expected from a strongly divided country

Is not winning the popular vote really a strong mandate? http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/09/501393501/...

View on HN

Politicians know the electoral college decides the election. If the candidates had been campaigning for the popular vote, presumably Trump would campaign harder for more votes in large states like California and New York.

Possible. But so would've Clinton.

Clinton couldn't gain as much support because she already has most of the likely voters, and a lot of Republicans think, why bother, she's a lock for the electoral votes.

Whatever, with no data to back up your claim this is just hot air. Maybe she would've gotten more support from people that now decided to vote third party or didn't bother to vote at all. You can basically rationalize every outcome outcome if you don't have to rely on data.

It's about the people, not the politicians. The fact that campaign strategy matters more than campaign platform is a huge weakness in the current system.

It's like that by design. Representative democracy is intended to limit the ability of the majority to shoehorn the minority -- in this case the coastal population centers vs. the rest of the country.

>Representative democracy is intended to limit the ability of the majority to shoehorn the minority

That is a benefit of certain aspects of our political system, but not the electoral college. The electoral college only serves to introduce bizarre volatility into the elections.

This is a nice sound bite (kind of), but doesn't bear out the actual facts. The EC was designed specifically to ensure that States (in the big-S, Constitutional meaning) decide the President, not the people.

That's true, but doesn't really contradict what I said.

It directly contradicts the last line of your statement. The EC does not exist "to introduce bizarre volatility"

Allowing states to control the elections is a mean not an end. Given that the vote of states are determined by a popular vote within the state, the only end that is accomplished by the EC is introducing volatility.

No it's not, it's like that as an artifact of what it used to be (that the President was elected by electors, not by the people).

Right, and it was up to the state to decide how the electors were elected. The intended goal is the same -- a midpoint between State-level republicanism and populist democracy.

Was discussing this earlier, how many countries are actually ruled by popular vote? The recent Iceland election brings in mind, where the six constituencies makes a vote in Reykjavík count less than any other vote. The reason for that is if they didn't, citizens of Reykjavík would have a majority on their own in any national election.

Similar, Sweden have a similar system where a vote from the small island of Gotland has 50% more impact compared to any other vote. The reason for that is that otherwise the island would only have 2 politicians in the parliament and the Swedish government wanted to have one more party representing the island than just the two major parties (which, based on those rules, means that the top 3 parties in Gotland is more or less guarantied one seat each).

I don't think any citizen's vote should count more than another just because they're part of a minority, geographic or otherwise. Imagine the uproar that would ensue if a politician suggested that a racial, ethnic, or religious minority group would have their votes count for more.

I am more split on the issue. geographical votes result that problems and needs in one area don't get overlook because of population statistics. In the worst case this could lead to countries splitting up into smaller parts, just so that each area which its own special problems and needs can govern themselves.

To take a practical example, the European parliament. Seats are allocated to each state according to population using degressive proportionality, which mean that Luxembourgish voters have roughly 10x more influence per voter than citizens of the six large countries. The alternative would be that Luxembourgish have practically no vote, since their population would be too small to even get a single seat, meaning their vote would have 0 influence. Which one is more fair?

I agree with you about the European parliament example, but speaking of the U.S. situation specifically, we already have a bicameral legislature with disproportionate representation for lower population states in one of its houses. We also have federal courts to step in when any laws are stepping on the rights of minority populations.

You've also touched on one of the longest-running debates in American politics: should we treat states as independent and semi-autonomous or allow the federal government to dictate policy direction for the nation. You can probably tell what side I'm on. People still claim that the American civil war was about the South defending "states' rights" when I, and many others, feel that it was about defending the rights of many people actually in those states.

That might be a little off topic. Anyway it's an interesting debate, but it's just hard to see how a candidate for national office can win more votes across the country and come out the loser.

Yes. We have states which gerrymander the Senate then we have gerrymandered House districts.

Wyoming (pop. 584,153) has two Senators. California (pop. 38.8 million) has two Senators. CA is 66 times the population. Alaska (pop. 736,732), two Senators.

Seems like the people have spoken

Reply on news.ycombinator.com