[TulliusCicero]

> The lesson that a lot of anti-Trumpers appear to have taken away from this election is that the electoral college is bad because it lets people who don't live on the coasts have a say too.

Utter nonsense. Under a popular vote-based system, each person in a non-coastal state would have exactly as much say as each person in a coastal state. To the extent that coastal areas might have more sway as a whole because they have more people, isn't that the whole point of democracy?

If we want to give people in less populous areas more power because they're a minority, why stop there? Why don't we give Asians and blacks more voting power than whites? Why not give Muslims and Jews more voting power than Christians? We could give more voting power to gays and lesbians than straight people!

Why is rural area/state vs urban area/state the divide where we ought to privilege the minority? Why not some other dimension that historically has involved a lot more oppression? Wouldn't that make more sense?

[c0nfused]

No, the point of the United States is to unite the states into a manageable single government. It is not to provide a direct action democracy to the people.

We give states a base number of votes for being a state,2 , then add them based on population. This means that smaller states get a boost in power vis a vis larger ones but that larger states still matter more. This is not a bad thing.

States provide the basic block upon which Government in the US rests. It is in our interests to provide states with more equal power at a national level than population would dictate.

If you pass a constitutional amendment to adjust voting laws you can enable exactly whatever you like though, for any of your more hyperbolic suggestions you would need to override many of the existing protections as well but if you wanted to be an asshole along with the rest of america there is no reason we could not do so using our existing legal framework.

The argument is not about rural versus urban but about the relative power of small versus large states. This isn't a historical issue but a simple legal one. States actually matter in the United States.

[TulliusCicero]

> No, the point of the United States is to unite the states into a manageable single government. It is not to provide a direct action democracy to the people.

Right, obviously this was the point at the time of the Constitution's creation, and it made sense at that time because people thought of themselves more as citizens of their states than of their country. But that's no longer true, and hasn't been for a long time.

> This means that smaller states get a boost in power vis a vis larger ones but that larger states still matter more. This is not a bad thing.

Again, let me show you how absurd this is:

"This means that religious minorities get a boost in power vis a vis larger ones but that larger religions still matter more. This is not a bad thing."

"This means that racial minorities get a boos in power vis a vis white people but that white people still matter more. This is not a bad thing."

Why is it a good thing for geographic minorities to get extra voting power, but not minorities for other dimensions?

> States provide the basic block upon which Government in the US rests. It is in our interests to provide states with more equal power at a national level than population would dictate.

1. The Senate still does that anyway. 2. Why is that advantageous in this particular context?

> If you pass a constitutional amendment to adjust voting laws you can enable exactly whatever you like though, for any of your more hyperbolic suggestions you would need to override many of the existing protections as well but if you wanted to be an asshole along with the rest of america there is no reason we could not do so using our existing legal framework.

You don't even need a constitutional amendment actually, the interstate compact is sufficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

Of course it's unlikely Republicans will back this since the current setup works to their advantage.

> The argument is not about rural versus urban but about the relative power of small versus large states.

Yes, but in practice states with larger populations tend to be more urbanized and states with small populations tend to be more rural.

[apatters]

> To the extent that coastal areas might have more sway as a whole because they have more people, isn't that the whole point of democracy?

But the United States was never intended to be a popular democracy. In their wisdom the Founding Fathers acknowledged the problems inherent in democracy (it devolves too easily into two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner). Instead, they created a federal republic, in which the primary powers of governance would be invested in the states. This is evident in the text of the 10th amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The essential characteristic of this federal republic was that issues would be decided locally, and only a few necessary powers would be delegated to the central government. Small, local governments have many advantages: it's easier for ordinary people to participate in and influence them, and they're harder for big money to control. Local governments listen more closely to their constituencies and their decisions more accurately reflect what their communities want. While some of the Founders were fonder of a strong central government than others, none of them would have supported the degree of centralization we have today.

I can't help but wonder what our society would look like if we had adhered to the original vision of the Founders. Indeed, our entire moral framework would be based on the reality that people only a few hours' drive away might have very different values, and rather than coercing them through the threat of government force, we had to either persuade them to change their minds, or learn to work with people who were very different from us. In the modern United States people pay a lot of lip service to these ideals but at the end of the day they just want to get their candidate elected so that he/she can force everyone else to conform to their beliefs. Authoritarians on both sides of the political spectrum grow bolder every day and I can't help but feel that the American experiment in self-rule may be approaching its twilight.

The antidote is a return to the true meaning of the 10th amendment. A more local government which is influenced and participated in directly by the people it governs. A world where your vote is one of hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of millions, and genuinely does count. An end to the US central government as a tool of coercion and a dismantling of the most powerful bureaucracy in human history. Unfortunately the national conversation is very, very far away from this idea. Everyone's so caught up hoping that the next autocrat at the top will come from Team Blue/Team Red depending on their favorite color...

[throwaway729]

You're confusing federalism with the politics surrounding the electoral college.

The motivation for the electoral college had nothing to do with the values you've outlined in your post.

Incidentally, re: your thought experiment, we'd also have slavery and women wouldn't be allowed to vote. The politics of 1780 wasn't idyllic.

[TulliusCicero]

Yes, I'm aware of how things were at the time of the Constitution's creation. But things have changed; people no longer thing of themselves as Virginians first, and Americans second. As America has industrialized and developed, that the nation has become more tightly-knit and less an aggregation of states has been inevitable.

> Small, local governments have many advantages: it's easier for ordinary people to participate in and influence them, and they're harder for big money to control. Local governments listen more closely to their constituencies and their decisions more accurately reflect what their communities want.

Local governments also have certain disadvantages: just look at the housing and transportation situation in the SF bay area. Excessive fragmentation has resulted in horrible policies, with each community unwilling to compromise or do what makes sense for the area as a whole. It's basically tragedy of the commons.

> While some of the Founders were fonder of a strong central government than others, none of them would have supported the degree of centralization we have today.

Who cares? The country is radically different than the primarily agrarian society they had, what worked then won't work now.

The founders would also be horrified at our views on sex and gender, just because they were smart men for their time doesn't mean we need to follow their beliefs for all time.

> The antidote is a return to the true meaning of the 10th amendment. A more local government which is influenced and participated in directly by the people it governs. A world where your vote is one of hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of millions, and genuinely does count.

This doesn't happen because it's ineffective, same reason that -- current moves towards populism/nationalism notwithstanding -- there's a long-term trend towards more integration and fewer trade barriers as nations become more developed.

More fragmentation among local governments means powers are closer to individual citizens, yes, but that also means more government overhead: you're losing economies of scale. For example, imagine how well the interstate highway system would work if there were no real federal government or even state governments, and you just had hundreds or thousands of cities each managing little pieces of it.

[diggernet]

I regret that I have but one upvote to give for my country.