[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 And the tyranny of the majority has (arguably) been replaced by the tyranny of the minority (not any better imo.)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.