Hacker News Reader

Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

National Popular vote for President is about the most worthless static one can cite to bluster their position for political balance

National Popular vote should not be used for any reason for any purpose, unless you want to completely change the American system of government ending federalism completely, which I have no desire for, I like federalism

View on HN

>National Popular vote should not be used for any reason for any purpose, unless you want to completely change the American system of government

Well, yes, that is exactly what many people want, a government that is more representative of the will of the people. We don't have to throw out federalism to get there, but a system that was not intentionally designed to support minority rule would be nice.

The system was intentionally designed to reserve power to the people AND the states, just not the people. Aka Federalism

If you remove the power of the states, leaning only on "the will of the people" you are getting rid of federalism,

Yes, we'll need to completely change everything about our government, just like we did when we mandated elections for senators in 1913. /s

You like federalism because you're a conservative and there is a higher percentage of conservative states than conservative people. And that is just a result of political territory gerrymandering battles of the 1800s. For example splitting Dakota into two states or admitting Wyoming as a separate state were all political gerrymandering battles that benefit your ideology today.

We just had a demonstration in the US of the desirability of a process that unambiguously reveals the winner of a presidential election. Well, having 50 smaller elections, then combining the results in an electoral college is one such process. In particular, if it werent for the federalized structure, i.e., if we had a purely popular vote, in 2000 we would've had to re-count not just the Florida ballots, but also the ballots in the other 49 states.

I am far far far from conservative so that is fail.

1990's democrat platform I was probally 60-70% aligned with, 2020's democrat platform I am 20% aligned with

Republicans I probably agree maybe 40% with, 50% on a good day.

In this context as an example, I do not agree with banning abortions, but I also think Roe was bad law and decided incorrectly so.....

The point I was trying to make is that federalism is dumb because states are arbitrarily gerrymandered based on 1800s politics.

It's easy to like it when it provides you the outcome that you're favourable towards. For people, the majority in this case (as evidence by the popular vote count), who do not agree with these outcomes, federalism is a fucking mess.

In no way it makes sense that the Senate should wield the power it has when South Dakota has the same weight as California. It's ludicrous.

Getting rid of the electoral college is not the same as killing federalism. It's not even close.

What planet are you living on? Seems not to be earth...

They seem to live on a planet where "PHP is the best". It's definitely one of the stranger parallel universes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com