[wakawaka28]

Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.

[Zigurd]

> Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states.

It would give every human, who has the right to representation, exactly proportionate influence. The weird fashy retired cops in Idaho will have to settle for having the same number of senators as Californians have.

[wakawaka28]

That is not a good argument. People have a right to self-determination. The same logic of populism can be applied on a trans-national scale, even. There is no limit because under your logic, any person's vote is as good as any other's. The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom. I don't care if the entire state of California is against how I live, because they are thousands of miles away and deserve less say in how I live than my neighbors. The federal system we have strikes a balance between the two.

A president of a federation such as the US must represent the individual states equally, because there can only be one president and that seat has disproportionate power. I really think people flip flop on the popular vote issue based on whether they think it helps their particular party or not, which is unbelievably short-sighted.

[Apocryphon]

> The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom.

On this specific point- do you contend that unitary republics, such as France, are inherently less free than federal entities? How are provinces less free than states? Is Canada less free than the U.S.?

[rsynnott]

Did the EU get less free after Lisbon when it transferred power from the commission and council of ministers (each state has similar influence) to the parliament (each person has similar influence)? Like, that was about the least contentious part of Lisbon; it was broadly popular. Very few people would think they lost freedom through it.

[wakawaka28]

The effect I just described is just one factor affecting the freedom of a group. Sometimes you do need to have a larger entity around beyond your local government for various reasons. I would think that the potential for the worst tyranny is smaller in geographically smaller countries or units, because people can leave. For example, people who don't like a city or county can leave it. Provinces and states are also possible to leave behind if you can't stand the laws. Countries are trickier to leave because of international relations, but it is still possible. I also expect small countries are easier to leave than big ones. It's not ideal to have to move, but at least you can move away from localized issues. Some localized issues may also be avoided by seeking input from only the people who will be affected. All in all, I think it is easier to find consensus among smaller groups, and the larger a group gets the harder it is to make rules or policies that everyone is happy with.

[bryanlarsen]

Arbitrary lines on maps are arbitrary. North & South Dakota are far more similar than north and south California.

[wakawaka28]

The lines on maps are not arbitrary. People decided them by choice and in some cases by force. You might feel no particular attachment to your state, but if another state decided that your state should be exploited in some way, your primary source of support would be your neighbors within those so-called arbitrary lines.

[bryanlarsen]

I used North and South Dakota for a reason. The only reason they were split was to hijack the Senate.

[wakawaka28]

That is misleading. There was no state of Dakota. The two became states at the same time. Even Wikipedia says this:

>Regionalist tensions between the northern and the southern parts of the territory were present since the beginning.

So, the split was not likely about senate seats. It was about people getting along within each state.

[FactKnower69]

Damn imagine if everyone's vote was equally weighted, what a disaster for democracy that would be. Mob rule!!

[wakawaka28]

I sense some sarcasm. But you ought to know that the founders, along with Aristotle and other Greeks (basically, the inventors of democracy), were afraid of mobs and sought to temper the whims of the people.

States are given representation proportional to their populations, and also equal representation (in the Senate). The EC and House seats aren't just based on voter turnout, voter population, or even the actual number of citizens in the state (which is rather problematic). So this whole push for direct democracy in the presidential election is stupid. Yes, swing states are a thing, but only because the other states vote consistently in a particular way.

Another problem with using the popular vote to decide the presidential election is that it inventivizes fraud. If someone managed to corrupt a few populous states, they could generate extremely high numbers of fake votes to drown out every other state.

[bialpio]

Current system theoretically allows for the presidency to be won even though the candidate got less than 30% of the popular vote. In my opinion the existence of such an edge case makes it undefendable.

What do you mean here by "incentivizes fraud"? Lying on the campaign trail is not fraud. In any case, the same argument about fraud still applies, you just need to target swing states.

[wakawaka28]

Every system has edge cases. You can't defend the possibility of millions of people having zero representation just because they did not vote either.

I think it's obvious what fraud I'm talking about: fraudulent votes. It stands to reason that a large state can generate more fraudulent votes than a small state can generate legitimately. Fraud is always an issue but it is more of an issue with popular vote because who can question extremely high voter turnout?

[bialpio]

Can you name edge cases of popular vote system that electoral college system does not also have?

You do realize that just because the popular vote is national does not mean that all the votes would be dumped at a desert in New Mexico and then tallied? Vote tally would still happen at the level of polling places and then aggregated - exactly how it's done in the electoral college system now. The only difference would be an introduction of one more level of aggregation (from state to nationwide). You could still detect fraud at earlier stages.

[wakawaka28]

I did already name an edge case of popular vote that the electoral college system doesn't have (sorry, in another thread). Actually more than one. If a state has low turnout for any reason then their contribution to the election is proportionally diminished with popular voting. That DOES NOT happen with EC, because the weight of the state is decided by its population.

>You do realize that just because the popular vote is national does not mean that all the votes would be dumped at a desert in New Mexico and then tallied? Vote tally would still happen at the level of polling places and then aggregated - exactly how it's done in the electoral college system now.

I don't trust the vote counting systems we have now. We have unverified ballots by mail, voting without ID, and unaccountable voting machines. If you look into it you'll find that it is surprisingly easy to harvest votes from invalids at nursing homes, homeless people, and dead people. There is no way for me to to make sure my own vote is counted and no illegitimate ones are counted. Compare our elections that are increasingly uncertain for weeks or months to other countries like Argentina where everyone is required to vote and the result is known the next day.

[Apocryphon]

The current system incentivizes fraud in swing states, so the fraud is simply shifted elsewhere.

[wakawaka28]

I think it's different. In any case, you can imagine a scenario where different states have wildly different voter turnout. That could even happen due to a natural disaster such as the hurricanes we've seen in the past few weeks. How messed up would it be for a state ravaged by a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, or whatever to have its influence diminished because people were unable to vote? It is already bad enough that the votes could be skewed based on specific counties. But imagine the whole state losing its actual representation because of power outages and stuff. It might even encourage some states to sabotage other states, to reduce turnout.

[Apocryphon]

> But imagine the whole state losing its actual representation because of power outages and stuff.

What you are describing would be a problem regardless of the presence of the electoral college.

[wakawaka28]

It is more of a problem without the electoral college, because as I said the popular vote is sensitive to voter turnout. No turnout means no representation. The electors can always step up to represent their state, and if even they can't then presumably the entire election would be delayed.

[namaria]

> the founders, along with Aristotle and other Greeks

Slavers who designed and oversaw slaver states.

[wakawaka28]

That does not discredit what they said or thought on this issue. This is essentially an ad hominem.

[namaria]

It matters when you are pointing to the 'hominem' as political thought leaders. I think it's fair as a counter to an appeal to authority.

[wakawaka28]

It would only be fair as a counter to their authority if the attack is relevant. I don't think it is relevant to drag slavery into a discussion about the nature of democracy and mob rule, or that the existence of widespread slavery on every continent at the time detracts from their insight. It is a purely tangentual argument to be had. For all your moralizing, I know for a fact that a vast majority of the whiners today would not have had the courage to fight slavery when it was happening literally everywhere. The ancient Greeks and the founders of the US have in common the fact that they laid the groundwork for the slavery-free condition we enjoy today, whether you like that or not. They were the geniuses of their time, and outstanding among all geniuses of all time.