[throwaway729]

> because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too

I'm from the midwest and I still don't understand this sentiment. Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night? That seems extremely anti-democratic to me.

It's not that people who don't live on the coasts shouldn't have a say. It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.

We already have the senate. The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.

And state governments.

People who don't live on the coasts have an enormous amount of say without getting an extremely disproportionate voice in the presidential election.

[xahrepap]

It is anti-democratic by design. Founding fathers didn't want a democratic election for presidents.

I think a good example of what the electoral college is: you have a sports tournament. The winner isn't the person who gets the most points in all the games. It's the person who wins the most games.

[throwaway729]

The original purpose of the electoral college was NOT to provide disproportionate voice to non-populous states. In fact, the states backing the college were some of the most populous as long as you count slaves.

Also, the founding fathers weren't all supporters of the electoral college. Appealing to their ultimate compromise is a strange argument, especially since the original political motivations have largely become either irrelevant or reprehensible.

> It's the person who wins the most games.

That's the senate, and is not at all an accurate analogy for the way the electoral college works.

[theli0nheart]

> The original purpose of the electoral college was NOT to provide disproportionate voice to non-populous states. In fact, the states backing the college were some of the most populous as long as you count slaves.

This begs for a source. Where is it stated exactly what the purpose of the electoral college was, in the Founding Fathers' own words?

Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that at the time the U.S. was founded, the individual states were essentially their own countries with individual governments and leadership. The only way they could make the deal work with all of them was to ensure that no one state could "overrule" the others. If smaller states could be bullied by larger states, the term "united states" loses a quite a bit of its meaning.

[throwaway729]

> the individual states were essentially their own countries with individual governments and leadership

The debate over the scope of the federal government dates back to before the end of the revolutionary war, and was a central topic of debate in the drafting and ratification process for the Constitution.

Remember that our first attempt at forming a country erred toward a weaker federal government, and was more-or-less an abject failure.

> Where is it stated exactly what the purpose of the electoral college was, in the Founding Fathers' own words?

Federalist 68, in which almost every argument makes literally no sense when compared to direct democracy.

That paper is mostly arguing for the electoral college over e.g. the "Governors" or "congressional" plans, leaving the infeasibility of direct election as a foregone conclusion.

A lot of founding fathers would've preferred a direct vote. See for example Anti Federalist 72. Using google you can also find quotes from Madison, for example, arguing that a direct vote would obviously be best.

Which begs the question: why not just do the obvious thing?

> The only way they could make the deal work with all of them was to ensure that no one state could "overrule" the others

Why don't we come out and be explicit about it -- the only way to make it work was the make sure that slave states were comfortable that they'd be able to retain political power while continuing to subjugate a huge portion of their population.

> If smaller states could be bullied by larger states, the term "united states" loses a quite a bit of its meaning.

Larger by what measure?

The slave states that were opposed to direct election and are today characterized as "rural" weren't actually significantly less populous than the northern states. Virginia -- a slave state -- was the most populous.

It's just that a huge number of their men were black, and so didn't count in a direct election.

So, the whole "rural / less populous states need a voice in presidential elections" thing is complete and utter horse shit. The actual issue was that "very populous states that choose to treat a big portion of the population as sub-humans need a vote controlled by whites but with power proportional to their entire population".

[13years]

Those view points aren't without debate.

https://fee.org/articles/the-accidental-genius-of-the-electo...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/15/...

[throwaway729]

Respectfully, the first article does not refute a single statement in the post you're replying to, which was about the historical reason for the electoral college. It merely justifies the electoral college from first principles in a modern context. It even says as much in its title.

The second article also fails to refute anything I've said. A direct vote was ruled out because of slavery -- the article says nothing about that. Once a direct vote was was ruled out, Federalist 68 basically explains why you'd want a college over the competing alternatives.

But the key move is ruling out direct democracy, not preferring one among the N bad alternatives. And the article never explains why a direct vote would've been ruled out. It's painfully clear what the reason for doing so was.

[MereInterest]

>The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. - Federalist Papers, # 68, Alexander Hamilton

The electoral college was there to prevent demagogues. That way, if one person managed to convince the populace with empty rhetoric, there would still be a reasonable body to meet, to discuss, and to choose somebody else.

[awinder]

Exactly, and the number of states with bound electors sure seem to be in conflict with the originalism of wanting to retain the electoral college argument...

[mch82]

Sources in my prior comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13039415

[cobralibre]

> In fact, the states backing the college were some of the most populous as long as you count slaves.

Worded another way: The states backing the college were some of the least populous UNLESS you counted slaves, who did not themselves enjoy rights of citizenship but were included in population counts to boost the political power of slaveholders.

[Frondo]

You know what, though? This isn't their world any more, it's ours.

One of the mistakes they made that we're all still suffering from was in how difficult it is in practice to amend the US constitution. Even the late great Antonin Scalia felt this way--in some interview he gave somewhere, he said that, if given a magic wand and the ability to change the constitution, he'd simply make it easier to amend.

Happily, there are people working on the electoral college problem, e.g. http://nationalpopularvote.com.

(I am, by the way, one of those coastal liberals who's pretty frustrated at how much less my vote matters than the vote of some dude in Wyoming.)

[maratd]

> One of the mistakes they made that we're all still suffering from was in how difficult it is in practice to amend the US constitution.

Completely disagree. It keeps us from screwing it up. Don't mess with something that isn't broken. And no, it isn't broken.

There's a reason the US government is one of the oldest in the world. They got quite a few things right from the start.

[Frondo]

For a lot of folks, citizens, mind you, the status quo is screwed up, is broken. That those citizens live out their lives with effectively no way to seek redress, due to a design decision made centuries ago, seems unjust to me.

After all, it's a legal document, not a religious text.

There's also dodgy and ambiguous language that keeps causing arguments and problems, in part because it wasn't written super clearly to begin with, and in part because centuries have passed since the people wrote it.

(Some of my big ones: clarifying the 2nd amendment one way or the other, addressing abortion rights directly, and adding something to strengthen every citizen's access to voting, e.g. national voting holiday, felon enfranchisement, whatever.)

I'd make it easier to amend, and trust in my fellow citizens to do the right thing.

[maratd]

> and trust in my fellow citizens to do the right thing

And there is your mistake. Our republic has endured precisely because full trust wasn't placed in the hands of the people, but rather the people were simply another check on the power of the government that was subdivided, distributed, and balanced.

There is a path for amending the constitution and it requires overwhelming consent, as it should.

[Frondo]

I don't believe that I am mistaken in trusting my fellow citizens with the democratic principle of self-governance.

For lots of people, they're not happy, the system doesn't work for them and they have no redress. Telling them it's for their own good? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

[matt4077]

That was actually the answer Scalia gave me when I asked him a question – must have been about 7 years ago.

(he had given a talk mostly criticizing the idea of enshrining rights in the constitution as an attempt to remove certain ideas from democracy)

[mcv]

The reason it's undemocratic by design, is that they wanted the electoral college to be able to stop bad choices from the people. There is admittedly a petition going to convince the electoral college to actually do that, but I'm doubtful it's going to happen. It seems just undemocratic without any kind of upside.

[CalChris]

> We already have the senate. The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.

The Electoral College also favors less populous states.

  Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature
  thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the
  whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the
  State may be entitled in the Congress

So Wyoming gets 3 electors for a population of 584,153 or 194717 per elector. California gets 55 for a population of 38.8M or 705454 per elector.

[notahacker]

For Presidential elections the electioneering arithmetic is significantly more complex than voters per elector though, and doesn't evenly favour states of any particular size.

Ultimately what matters is percentage swing to the other major party for the state to change electoral vote, scaled by the size of the state and realistic probability of the swing actually happening.

Wyoming might have fewer voters per elector than Florida, but as solidly Republican as states get there's not much point in paying it any attention beyond the primaries, whereas the priorities of a few thousand Cuban exiles in Florida can shape foreign policy because they frequently play a major role in determining the eventual president. And a smallish electoral bribe in the form of investment allocated to populous areas of large states Michigan and Wisconsin would, for better and for worse, probably have swung it for Clinton.

California is at the rougher end of both scales, both under-represented per head and unlikely to change hands. But you'd also probably be less likely to be ignored in a pure popular vote election if you lived in Wyoming, especially if you were amongst the minority of Wyoming residents willing to vote for either party depending on the individual candidates' programmes.

[curiousgeorgio]

> Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night?

Should that same philosophy apply globally? Should you be able to vote in a country where you don't live?

You may live in the United States, but if each state were a different country, wouldn't it make more sense that your vote carry more weight in your own country than others?

Obviously, we think of countries as being on a completely different level, but the Unites States was originally set up to be a group of states with a great deal of autonomy, united only by a relatively weak federal government. In that context, the president of the United States should be regarded as a president of the states, not a president of the people.

It certainly matters globally where you choose to lay your head down at night, just as it matters in which state you lay your head down at night, and that's by design. If you don't care for your state's laws, you should be able to find a state the matches your ideals without having to leave the country.

The president's power should therefore be removed by a layer of geographical abstraction from the people - it serves only to make limited decisions that affect all the states in a very limited way.

[puranjay]

I don't know why people harp on the 2 million popular votes thing.

If that was the goal, that's what the candidates would have campaigned for.

But the goal was 270 electoral votes, so that's what the candidates campaigned for.

This is like a losing soccer team saying that they won more free kicks, so they should get to win, not the team that scored more goals

[throwaway729]

> If that was the goal, that's what the candidates would have campaigned for.

And I think that would've been a good thing. Do you disagree?

[ng12]

I think this is one election where the Electoral College did it's job. One of the big issues Trump made this election was globalization. You know who benefits from globalization? People who live in metropolitan areas. Who pays the bill? People who live in small-town America. We are a federalist republic for this very reason -- to limit the ability of the majority to shoehorn the minority.

[mch82]

False, "blue states" largely pay the bill. For every dollar I get taxed in California, I get less than a dollar in Federal Government services. Florida gets over $4.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-st...

[ng12]

I meant a figurative bill, as in the socio-economic repercussions of globalizing manufacturing and low-skill service jobs. Why do you think low-income states need so much help? Because any industry they had closed down years ago.

[sgnelson]

Just no. The US economy relies on Urban areas. This is where the vast majority of wealth, innovation, and knowledge is created (at a much greater rate per capita, than rural areas). This is only increasing in part due to how knowledge is created/shared with agglomeration effects (in cities) and due to globalization (small factories could support small towns, with the loss of these factories, small towns die.)

Small towns do not pay the bills. (Do you seriously think that small town America could afford to build and maintain the Eisenhower 4 lane highway that runs through the town? They can't.)

There is practically zero evidence that "Small town America" isn't dying a painful death these days. You don't have to like it, I certainly don't. (I live in a state that was "Small town America.") But wake up, small town America is dying, and there is almost nothing that can be done to fix it. But trying to somehow "punish" Urban areas certainly doesn't make any sense.

And finally, do you really believe that it's better that a minority has the ability to "showhorn" the majority? Why?

[ng12]

Sorry, I mean the figurative bill. Small town America is dying exactly because of the socio-economic repercussions of globalization. That's the "bill" I was referring to.

> But trying to somehow "punish" Urban areas certainly doesn't make any sense.

It's not about punishing urban areas. It's about the direction we want our economy to take -- one that's increasingly focused on producing wealth in a small number of cities for a small number of people or one that provides for the greatest number of American citizens. We should be especially conscious of this divide as part of the tech community -- for all their economic weight Google/Apple/Facebook hire an incredibly small number of people compared to traditional American megacorps.

> And finally, do you really believe that it's better that a minority has the ability to "showhorn" the majority? Why?

A popular minority, yes. Population-wise the country would effectively be run by the Northeast and California who's needs and desires are not necessarily the same as the rest of the country. I believe direct democracy does not work in a country as large as the United States which is why we're (supposed to be) a federal republic.

[puranjay]

Sure, but the rules of the game were set before the candidates started playing. You can't lose and then retroactively change the rules to give yourself the victory.

If the rules are bad, change them the next time around.

[sgnelson]

That's what people are talking about?

Nobody is seriously saying, "let's change the rules now so Hillary wins!" Some people are calling for electors to not vote for Trump, but at least that's part of the original intent for the electoral college (and it's not likely to happen anyways).

But lots of people are saying, "This system is obviously broken since the will of the majority was not enacted, let's fix it."

So nice strawman, but I think I just burnt it down.

[throwaway729]

Which is exactly what's being proposed.

[13years]

Even this justification for changing the rules next time around has little merit.

In this case, it would be like the soccer team picking a really bad goalie, so they want to change the rules so goalies have less effect on game outcome.

If the DNC were correct about their assumptions, they should have won by a landslide. This should not be about changing the rules, it should be reevaluation of our beliefs and course corrections.

[cheetos]

> Why should the power of your vote depend on where you choose to lay your head down at night?

Because it turns out that has a very strong effect on the power of your vote :)

The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country." It checks the power of highly dense populations who are more likely to vote for pro-city federal policies, so the needs of those in "the country" are not ignored.

I didn't support Trump and live in a super-blue city, but when the EC was explained to me this way, it made sense. I don't want to see the US further turn into a place where you can only succeed if you live in a city.

[phailhaus]

The bigger problem is that the EC is a winner-takes-all system. If California has 55 EV's, and Candidate A wins by 1%, why do they get all 55 votes? Nearly half the state voted for Candidate B! I have found that the debate on the EC has been over a false dichotomy: either have the EC, or have a popular vote. What about distributing electoral votes based on percentage?

[nerfhammer]

A state can choose to allow this on its own. A couple do: Nebraska and Maine.

[sgnelson]

but even this still has issues. Such as, what are the electors based off of, state wide popular vote? What about rounding, up or down? Each congressional district (for states with more than 1 congressional district, and how about the other 2 electoral votes? At-large, a hybrid approach, what else?), Some predetermined electoral districting? etc.

And even with that question answered, this doesn't necessarily fix the problem, as it's still quite easy to have the electoral college votes not match the popular vote. So what's the real point of the modern electoral college? It just makes for a more complex, less precise, less democratic system overall.

[phailhaus]

Perhaps there is no point to the modern electoral college. With a little research, it turns out that the point of the electoral college was to act as a check against a demagogue that could manipulate the citizenry, and to ensure that "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." Oh, the irony...The EC was meant to be un-democratic, to keep someone like Trump from getting power.

When electors are bound to their vote as they are today, the electoral college seems to exist in order to give a greater voice to more rural states, to keep them from being forgotten. But then the opposite occurs: winner-takes-all means that candidates have little incentive to campaign in "safe" states and the entire election hinges on just a few.

[throwaway729]

> The electoral college exists to balance the voices of citizens in cities vs. "the country

That is the effect of the electoral college in modern politics, but it is not at all why the college exists.

[cheetos]

I saw your other comment alluding to this and was intruiged. If you have time, can you please elaborate?

[throwaway729]

Direct election was a proposal at the time, and many founding fathers supported it, but the slave states shot it down.

The slave states are often mis-characterized as rural/not populous as compared to northern states. But that logic only holds if the color of your skin defines your humanity -- slave states weren't significantly less populous, it's just that a huge portion of their populations weren't enfranchised. In fact, the most populous state was a slave state. So IMO the thesis that the electoral college is a result of slavery is mostly accurate.

As far as the "official" reasons (since slavery was a touchy motivation, even back in the day), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68 which outlines the "official" reasons for having a college as well as all of the alternatives at the time. Most of these seem pretty irrelevant to the modern world:

* As a veto on dangerous men -- I don't see this ever happening in our modern world. * To avoid "cabal, intrigue, and corruption" as well as pandering. None of these function as arguments against a direct vote, but rather as arguments against the use of governors, congress, etc. in place of the electoral college.

[cheetos]

Thanks!

[pg314]

There's an explanation on wikipedia [1]. In the light of the current election, the following sentence from that article sounds ironic to me: 'Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity," attaining high office.'

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat...

[mch82]

The Electoral College was created for two reasons as a compromise so that all of the states would sign the Constitution:

1. To balance power between states that have slaves and states that do not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise

2. To provide a way for people with better information than the general public to choose the President [0].

Addressing #1, we thankfully no longer have slaves, but the need to address population disparity still exists. In 1929 the Republican majority in congress put a cap of 435 on the number of members of the House of Representatives [1]. That has led to a ratio of 1:700,000 representation, compared to the intended 1:50,000 ratio (and the 1:30,000 ratio advocated by George Washington). This alters the effectiveness of both the Electoral College and the House by reducing effective representation as larger coalitions need to form in order to influence the vote of a single representative. In 2012, CNN indicated the UK has a 1:90,000 ratio and the government we established in Iraq 1:100,000 [2].

The procedures of the Electoral College have changed since its creation, undermining the ability of the EC to perform #2 [0]. Electors are now often uninformed and simply act a pledged voters.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_Stat... "Electoral College (United States)"

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap... "United States Congressional Apportionment"

[2]: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/opinion/flynn-expand-congress/ "CNN: What's wrong with Congress? It's not big enough."

[cyphax]

> 2. To provide a way for people with better information than the general public to choose the President [0].

Heheh, so the people chose Clinton, but the "people with better information" chose Trump? That just doesn't sound right. ;)

[13years]

>That seems extremely anti-democratic to me.

Exactly, and it is supposed to be. We are a republic and not a democracy. The founders strongly opposed democracy. One of the reasons being that minorities would have no representation if your government is by majority rule only.

[sgnelson]

This is not really true. While yes, the tyranny of the majority is a very important discussion, I would argue it plays no factor when it comes to the specifics of how we elect the president. And the tyranny of the majority has (arguably) been replaced by the tyranny of the minority (not any better imo.) The election process has changed dramatically since the founding of the country.

For instance, the electoral college now is almost nothing more than a rubber stamp, with the electors themselves now supposedly having to follow the will of the individual voters who have chosen a candidate for their state. This has not always been the way.

Which is to say, the way that we now elect the president is supposed to be democratic. The fact that many states have laws against faithless electors, which goes against the very design of the electoral college in the first place, which was to have "intelligent/elite" individuals to make a decision on who would truly be the best candidate for the whole of the country.

So when discussing the (again, specifically the election of the President, also see 12th amendment) electoral college, we cannot say that this is a republican process; it is not.

People act like the electoral college system is some unchangeable entity that is fundamental to this country, yet we have changed it countless times over the past 220ish years, (including 14th, 15th, 19th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 26th amendments to the US Constitution, which all effectively deal with who can vote, or how we choose a president/VP. Further, each state has changed many times how they choose the electors, which once may have been chosen by the legislator, but is now by popular vote).

Almost each and every change was designed to make the election of the President a more democratic process. To simply say that we are a republic and not a democracy misses the point, is untrue, ignores history, and is frankly, a lame excuse as to why we don't have a more democratic system for electing our president.

[13years]

>Almost each and every change was designed to make the election of the President a more democratic process. To simply say that we are a republic and not a democracy misses the point, is untrue, ignores history, and is frankly, a lame excuse as to why we don't have a more democratic system for electing our president.

It does not miss the point, this was the intention despite what may have changed later. Certainly it might be better stated that we were intended to be a republic, but that has been weakened over time. The founders also stated that government would always move towards greater concentrations of power and that the constitution was only a parchment barrier. Assuming that later revisions are improvements would be a logical fallacy without understanding original intent.

[throwaway729]

The college no longer provides for any of the purposes that motivated its creation.

If we judge the college based upon the criteria that motivated its creation, then we inevitably reach the conclusion that the college should be abolished.

[13years]

There is no reason to abolish it, unless you prefer majority rule.

However, if you want a true republic and protection against the problems of majority rule, then you might want to potentially change it, but not abolish it.

https://fee.org/articles/the-accidental-genius-of-the-electo...

[throwaway729]

The senate and modern house play that role.

As it stands, we have minority rule in nearly every branch of federal government.

[13years]

The article I linked covered this topic.

[throwaway729]

The FEE argument, if assumed to be self-consistent, works even better as an argument against a status quo that systematically favors a minority party over a (popular) majority party.

If the goal is balancing power between political parties, then the presidency should certainly be a popular vote or else the house and senate should be substantially reformed.

[criddell]

I think you're right. And I think that's why so many people are calling for the electoral college to elect Clinton rather than Trump.

Larry Lessig is probably the most prominent person calling for this. He has an op-ed in the Washington Post about this right now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-constitution-let...

Also, Dave Winer mirrored it here: http://scripting.com/2016/11/25/lessigOnTheElectoralCollege....

[mcv]

> We are a republic and not a democracy.

This is such an awful argument. North Korea is a republic and not a democracy. China is a republic and not a democracy. Denmark is a monarchy and a democracy. Why would you want your country to be an undemocratic republic when you could be a democratic republic?

[MisterBastahrd]

The founders also strongly opposed people who didn't own land from having a vote either. They're also all dead and have been for a couple hundred years.

[curried_haskell]

I don't know how many times people need to be educated on this, but democracy is orthogonal to being a republic.

The USA is both a republic and a democracy. You could say, a democratic republic.

[r7000]

Are the UK and Canada republics or democracies?

[jamie_ca]

They're both, as is the US. They aren't pure democracies, though.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Democracy_vs_Republic

[r7000]

The UK and Canada are not republics. There's no need to clarify "pure democracy"as no one thinks any modern democratic country is a pure democracy. All modern democracies are representative democracies.

Since there is, more or less, no other type of democracy around when a colloquial English speaker says "democracy" they mean representative democracy. Everything else is a pointless annoying semantic game.

Representative democracy is a perfectly acceptable term. Trying to shoehorn monarchies into the term "republic" is absurd.

[confounded]

No. The UK and Canada are monarchies, not republics.

[sgnelson]

It's a monarchy in name only. They're both constitutional monarchies which are really strictly parliamentary systems. The actual monarch is head of state, not head of government, and the Queen has almost nothing to do with the actual running of the Government, especially in Canada (and Australia, and so on). In reality, a parliamentary system such as the modern UK and Canada acts as a republic, despite what it's named.

At this point, the Queen is nothing more than a vestigial organ. (as an example, did the Queen come out for or against the Brexit vote? Have you ever seen a head of government remain so quiet about such an important event?)

[mcv]

The name is exactly the thing that distinguishes monarchies from republics. Modern monarchies are democracies, as are modern republics, though some monarchies and many republics in the world are still undemocratic.

Well, I would hope the move is towards more democracy, but it seems people everywhere are eager to vote against democratic freedoms these days.

[confounded]

Hey, I don't make the rules!

I disagree with little of the above, but I wonder how much of it is due to 'Liz 2 in particular. I can imagine a different monarch exerting a great deal more influence. They'd be perfectly able to do so. The UK's armed forces are loyal only to the monarch and not the government, for example.

[wslh]

> It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.

But everybody knows how the system works. It is late to discuss about its fairness.

[mzw_mzw]

> It's that if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election.

Except that in a universe where the President was selected by popular vote, the candidates would have campaigned differently anyway, so your point is completely moot.

[noobermin]

That they would try to appeal to all Americans and not just a handful in a few states? I think that is a better system.

[throwaway729]

Incidentally, this was an original motivation for the electoral college:

"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States"

It's almost like the very people who came up with the electoral college would be absolutely appalled at the idea that a small handful of states would determine the result of the presidential election...

[mzw_mzw]

No, they would try to run up the numbers in big cities and large media markets, and ignore the rest.

[magicalist]

> No, they would try to run up the numbers in big cities and large media markets, and ignore the rest.

But they do ignore the rest. How much campaigning was done in rural Texas or California? Or Wyoming or Montana for that matter?

It's silly to pretend that Michigan and Florida somehow represent the country folk of America.

[mzw_mzw]

The proposed changes to using the popular vote would not increase the campaigning in Wyoming or Montana either.

[mhurron]

> run up the numbers in big cities and large media markets

You mean they would campaign where the people are.

[Gaelan]

But why? Besides from actual rallies, appearances, etc, which I doubt have a very significant effect on people's votes (people only go to the rallies of their preferred candidates), there is no reason to target people in big cities. Given that most campaigning happens online or through the media at this point, there is no reason to restrict yourself to geographical areas.

[tallowen]

> The house also favors less populous states, even if not by design.

Out of curiosity, how does this happen in practice? My understanding was that seats were divided up by population (giving equal voice to those in more densely populated areas).

[dangoor]

I believe the problem is that the number of seats in Congress has not increased in 100 years despite a huge increase in population. This has caused a distortion by giving tiny states more representation than they should actually have based on their population relative to the bigger states.

[sgnelson]

as someone else posted, about halfway down here is a good explanation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/1...

But I would even go further; as to the house specifically and not the election of the president, you have inner state politics affecting the house and the distracting process. ie. Gerrymandering.

In my opinion, we are not seeing red states and blue states (or purple state), we have urban/suburban/rural interests all competing for resources. Keep in mind, now a days, we typically relate urban with democrats and suburban/rural with republicans, but this is not always the case, and sometimes a bit too simplistic.

In a state like North Carolina for instance, the state legislature is run by the republican party, which has the power on how each US house seat is redistricted. I would argue that NC rural interests have much more power than NC urban interests at the state legislature level. This then also gets mirrored in the US Congressional redistricting, where the US Congressmen for cities like Charlotte are geographically divided to give Charlotte as little Congressional power as possible. (For instance, the Congressman for the NC 9th district was in fact essentially the Congressman for just South Charlotte and a few outlying suburbs, his seat has been spread out to a small part of South Charlotte and 3 or 4 very rural counties. This means that he can no longer solely lobby for South Charlotte's interests, but now has a "split" constituency (suburban vs. rural with different needs/wants. Think of it as a majority minority style district for rural areas). I would argue that this means that Charlotte's interests are in part superseded by small rural county interests, which once again, (unfairly?) gives more political power to lower density areas than larger density areas.

(Keep in mind, the above is all my own opinions and arguments, in currently lacking in hard evidence (such as the NC legislature intentionally split the 9th district to deny power to Charlotte) and relies on a few assumptions. So take it with a grain of salt, though I stand by my analysis.)

TL;DR; Even in states with a somewhat equal rural/urban divde, some states give more power to rural areas than urban areas by gerrymandering.

[gweinberg]

They're even with a rounding error, but every state must get at least one. The rounding error is pretty big for the smallest states.

[lintiness]

"if someone wins a popular vote by 2 million fucking votes, then they should probably win the election."

what if she spent TWICE the money getting them?

[phailhaus]

Why is the amount of money spent relevant? At the end of the day, more individuals felt that Clinton should be their president.

[lintiness]

uh, dunno ... maybe yield on dollars spent is indicative of, say, their ability to manage our tax dollars.

[phailhaus]

No? I don't see how spending money on a campaign is related to spending money on, say, social security. Otherwise, you're suggesting that advertising companies would be fantastic at government. Like, "They got me to buy Coke, they must be great at managing our public education!"

[lintiness]

i didn't qualify their "ability" to govern; i suggested a poor use of money spent campaigning MIGHT be indicative of one's poor use of money governing. do you have a logical counter, or are you and everybody else around still crying over the hillary loss?

[phailhaus]

My logical counter was that use of money spent campaigning has almost nothing to do with one's use of money governing. One is related to your ability to motivate a voter base, and the other is about policy-making and apportioning funds for public services. Completely unrelated.

[RCortex]

You're ignoring the Citizens United decision, we don't have real figures on campaign spending with superpacs and third party campaign vehicles. Additionally no one is taking into account the resources the Russian government poured into the Trump campaign, their state news channel was repeating the republican/trump message ad verbatim. [1]

[1] http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/underst...

[sxg]

That's a separate issue. Not saying it's right or wrong, but at the end of the day, she had more votes.

[jedmeyers]

She got more votes in a system where opponent did not optimize his process for more votes, therefore it is a meaningless metric.

[dingaling]

Indeed, but if it were based on raw votes then we'd probably not have had Mrs Clinton vs Mr Trump in 2016 because the timeline would have branched in 2000 based on the same metric.

It's an interesting example of arguing against a cause that's only relevant because of the effect it caused previously.

[logmeout]

Legal votes? Not likely and also not likely she got the plural vote. Yes, even if 100% of the difference were legal (they aren't) it's not a majority, it's a plurality.