[nullsmack]

It's a shame they couldn't have ended the Electoral College error. It's very frustrating knowing how much better things could've turned out if the people who won the popular vote had been able to take office instead of the losers.

[roenxi]

There is a system explicitly designed not to always give the victory to the popular vote winner. If, on occasion, it does what is was explicitly designed to do that isn't really an error.

"Haha, we have 50.5% of the vote now you have to do what we say" is workable but hardly a stronger moral position than securing 49.5% - particularly after looking at the turnout situation in the US. Philosophically if there is less than overwhelming majorities (talking 60%, 70% style figures) there is a lot of room to question whether a democratic consensus has been achieved.

[hacknews6]

Yes, because as we all know, despite winning, 50.5% isn't enough of a margin, so actually, the loser should win instead.

[defrost]

It sounds as if you're in favour of a coalition government in the absence of a significant margin.

[roenxi]

I know how I would set things up. But in the vast majority of cases there are objectively good and bad policies and the fact that people voted doesn't change whether something is a good idea or not. Nobody's voting in China as far as I know and they've seeing unbelievable rates of improvement in their living standards for the last few decades, it isn't that hard.

The issue is that the political class (really any group of people) is inevitably stuffed with corrupt sociopaths, tends towards groupthink, is easily dissociated from reality and insists on using social proof rather than a scientific approach. The system as it stands is just a big complicated stick to wallop them with a Trump every so often if they really muck things up to the point where their incompetence triggers too many problems for enough people. The exact trigger % of people needed to engage the stick should be set sensibly but in practice the US is making do with around 20% of the population according to Wikipedia [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...

[Lienetic]

Can you explain further how you've come to the conclusion that "in the vast majority of cases there are objectively good and bad policies?"

[roenxi]

I believe it would be straightforward to determine policy if we had an oracle with perfect knowledge that operated under a so-called veil of ignorance [0]. Getting good outcomes with a fair & reasonable minimum standard of lifestyle for the people who are the worst off isn't particularly hard. The problem with implementing that system is the lack of oracles and deficits of intellectual honesty.

The key point is we don't need to vote to determine what works well. Whether a policy gets good results is just a fact regardless of whether or not people vote for it. And there are a large number of policies that were terrible the last time people tried them and will continue to be terrible even if the voting public decides to try them again.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

[082349872349872]

> Nobody's voting in China as far as I know

They vote from an approved list of candidates, but the following makes it sound as if, in principle anyway, there ought to be enough voting to keep the better apparatchiks and bounce the worse ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China#Direct_elec...

tl;dr: lots of voting; no ballot access

EDIT: meanwhile, over on https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國選舉 we find the Party line:

> 《人民日報》称，中国大陸的基层换届选举是世界上规模最大的基层民主选举。

("The People's Daily* says the grass-roots general elections in mainland China are the largest [900 million voters] grass-roots democratic elections in the world.")

* http://www.people.com.cn

[gradschoolfail]

Borodin might have kept Cordwainer at arms length ( or hardly ever fraternized with SYS except thru Eugene. (Purely from psychoanalysis)

Have you checked with the Lords of Instrumentality? (Did 101 speak with the equivalent of a midwestern accent?)

[082349872349872]

Nope, will have to dig in! ('Watch, but do not govern; stop war, but do not wage it; protect, but do not control; and first, survive!' sounds very 3-principles-adjacent)

[Dalewyn]

Considering that the President, Chief Executive of the Federal Government, represents and is elected by the States, a nationwide popular vote election is a violation of State sovereignty.

The United States of America is exactly what it says: A Union of sovereign States. It's very sad a lot of people don't understand this because they slept through civics/history class.

[hakfoo]

The roles and capabilities of the state and federal government have evolved since the 1700s.

The state level of government feels more and more like a historic novelty carried over as "we always did it this way" and "it would require far too much political capital to touch"-- America's answer to the House of Lords or the Governor General.

[Dalewyn]

State sovereignty is how and why certain States legalized marijuana while others don't, why certain States impose a given tax the way they do and others don't, why States each have a National Guard that is legally independent of the Federal military and thus from the authority of the President, and a host of other matters that are determined or reserved by a State and its electorate.

The United States of America is a very vast country literally spanning an entire continent, State sovereignty is more important now than ever before because the needs and desires of the peoples within them can and will vary wildly from each other; they varied wildly with just 13 States across the eastern seaboard, let alone 50 States spanning a continent and islands in the Pacific.

The Federal government exists to better enable functions of government where the States have a unanimous consensus, and to that end the Federal government including the Presidency exists strictly at the pleasure of the States. For all other matters where States can and will disagree, the States reserve the power to decide by themselves for themselves.

[hacknews6]

Please explain how 10 > 5, and that makes 5 the winner.

[FartinMowler]

Okay. The equivalent at the single voter level is if a voter is undecided between Candidate A and Candidate B. After much contemplation this voter decides she's 50.5% in favour of B and 49.5% in favour of A, so heads to the polls to cast 100% of her single vote for B.

[abenga]

Well, at the very least the EC votes should be adjusted from time to time to roughly match the population proportions, no?

[Dalewyn]

It is.

The 538 Electors are derived from the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators in Congress, with an additional 1 Representative and 2 Senators equivalents in Electors allocated to the District of Columbia (specifically the same count as the least populous State in the Union, currently Rhode Island with 1 Representative and 2 Senators).

That means of the 538 Electors, 436 of them are allocated according to State population counts as recorded in the United States Census taken every 10 years.

[hacknews6]

And the outcomes are frequently undemocratic. Only in America is it fair for the smaller number to be bigger than the bigger number, which just so happens to conveniently benefit the minority, who then twist themselves into knots to "well, akshually" us all to death.

[benmmurphy]

In Australia the seats in the upper house of Parliament are strictly divided between the States with each receiving 12 seats regardless of their relative populations (two territories which are not proper states also receive 2 seats each). I suspect some other countries may have a similar federal model where there is some kind of barrier to stop larger states from being predatory towards smaller states. If you check wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism) you can see some other countries like Argentina have a similar model to Australia. I think in Australia there was probably similar historical reasons for the Senate as the Electoral College in the USA. The colonies in Australia were self-governing and then decided to create a central government and the Senate was a way to give the smaller colonies confidence they wouldn't be taken advantage of in the future.

[hacknews6]

That's a bold statement considering it is utterly incorrect.