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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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

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.

Although true, this is true as a point in time statement. In the end, they were convinced of the alternative argument.

Like the poster near the beginning of the thread said, the problem isn't really who wields Federal power, or who decides; the problem is that there's too much of it.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are always people who are unhappy. There is no system which will make everyone happy all of the time.

However, if you give the keys to the populace at large with unlimited power, you'll have tyranny of the majority and then you'll have bigger problems to chew on.

Do I really need to cite the most recent election as evidence? Democracy will always lean towards populism. Its only use is as a check on government.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Add some useful information, or move on (possibly down voting if you can and are so inclined).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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....

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?

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

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

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.

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?)

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

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.

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

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.

"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...

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.

You mean they would campaign where the people are.

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).

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.

what if she spent TWICE the money getting them?

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

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

The sarcasm in your post is, funnily enough, the opposite of the truth because they actually have MORE say than people living in coastal cities[0]

Not only that, but as populations in major cities increase, and number of electoral votes stay the same, this effect increases [1]

[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/1...

(Ed: fixed AMP link)

Isn't that one of the primary mechanisms of sarcasm?

This is not a fair assessment. Plenty of people learned that lesson a long time ago, but always get laughed out of the room by the party in power.

I remember in the aftermath of 9/11 when GWB made one of the largest executive power grabs in history, and the right-wing whole-heartedly supported him in the name of keeping us safe. A common refrain from my left-leaning friends explaining why this was a bad idea was "Imagine someone like Hillary Clinton with these powers." Of course, that was all hand-waved away until Obama took office, then suddenly "executive overreach" became such a hot topic.

The only way to change the momentum of the executive gaining more power over more things is to convince both the in- and out-of-power parties that giving the President more authority is a bad thing. Good luck convincing the in-power party of that, no matter which side of the aisle they sit on.

Yup. That's true of all "true" reform. Most of the campaign finance reform laws that end up passing could more accurately be called "the incumbent protection act".

edit: perhaps more constructively - if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.

Uhhh. Yes.

> if he were to be serious about dismantling Net Neutrality, what would he have done differently than exactly what he's doing now? Beyond his most insane proposals (Muslim registration and internment/concentration camps, building a physical 2000 mile wall on the Mexican border) he seems to be making all the necessary, concrete appointments necessary to put the necessary people in place to follow through on his campaign pledges.

I have no idea. I see him walking back a lot of stuff, even before he's in office. I'm going to classify him as the used-car-salesman that says whatever he has to say to get a signature on the line below. I barely have enough energy to worry about all the things that do go wrong and have absolutely none left to spend on fantasies about more things that might go wrong. Getting old and tired, I guess...

Well, this is both his best and worst trait. It's infuriating when you're trying to work out what he'll really do, but if he uses it successfully to gain certain concessions from other nations, he could be the best negotiator America's had in a long time.

Trump is a protectionist. Or is he? If China (or many other trade partners who exploit America's openness and don't reciprocate) genuinely believes he's going to impose tariffs on their imports unless they eliminate their barriers to US goods, what will they do? Who will blink first? If he doesn't chicken out we're about to watch the highest stakes poker game in modern history.

No. Everyone should have an equal say. That's what national popular vote ensures. Clinton got over 2m more votes than her opponent, but will not be President. That's not democracy.

I completely agree with your point about limiting executive power.

If the election were a popular vote, the candidates would campaign for that. They'd focus more on big cities etc. There's no guarantee Clinton would have won the popular vote if that had been the case.

Edit: If you're downvoting could you explain why?

The Heritage Foundation is smart enough to realise the EC favours Republicans and therefore the policies it promotes and so will spin anything to make that seems like a good idea, because the will of the people being enacted would work against their goals.

Finally, and more a reply to the parent comment, even a popular vote within a two-party system can be suboptimal in some ways and so be less than an ideal "democracy". Ranked choice voting or similar systems can stop "regulatory capture" of the two main parties from denying the voters a legitimate voice.

Politicians across the spectrum have either defrauded their people with "democracy" rhetoric, or accepted it as a de facto standard for the modern age. Which one of the two, I'm clearly not possessing of the answers.

Seriously?

Second: my response wasn't to Heritage, but to skirunman above, who didn't explain any of this stuff either. If you want to ding me for attacking the source, you need to cop to the fact that the whole subthread is an appeal to authority. And that authority is pretty suspect.

I suppose it was kind of a rotten trick to not tell the Democrats about the Electoral College beforehand, yeah.

Maybe I'm not understanding this fully but I don't follow the people saying that Clinton should have won because she got the most votes. If the rules said the winning party is the one with the most votes, the campaign strategies of each candidate would have been completely different. It sounds like moving the goal posts to me. It's like you agreed the team with the most goals is the winner beforehand but then after you lost you want to argue you should be the real winner because you had more possession of the ball.

It won't take him any significant personal time to get rid of net neutrality. Under Trump the FCC commissioners will change from a 3 to 2 Democrat majority to a 3 to 2 Republican majority in 2017. Net neutrality passed at the FCC on a 3 to 2 straight party line vote.

Republicans are massively, overwhelmingly against net neutrality and Republicans control both houses of Congress, so it is a pretty damn safe bet that the new Republican commissioner will be one who agrees with the overwhelming majority Republican opinion on this.

Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, is a Democrat, but almost certainly will follow tradition and relinquish the chairmanship pretty much as soon as Trump takes office, and Trump will name one of the Republican commissioners as the new chairman.

So, in 2017 we will have an FCC commission chaired by a Republican, with a 3 to 2 Republican majority. Reversing net neutrality will almost certainly be one of the first things on the agenda for the 3 to 2 Republican majority, Republican chaired FCC, especially considering that reversing net neutrality has been a priority for Republicans ever since Wheeler went with Title II reclassification.

Wouldn't it be stupid for net neutrality advocates to wait until Trump actually does this to worry about it and start working to stop it? It's not like, say, building the wall and making Mexico pay for it, which has so many moving parts, cost, and problems to overcome that ignoring it until something concrete actually happens is fine--the wall plan is very likely to fall apart on its own long before it gets to that stage. Dismantling net neutrality will be close to trivial once Trump's appointments are on the commission.

It would actually be more work on Trump's part to stop net neutrality from being dismantled, as he'd have to do some work to find a Republican commission nominee who is not against net neutrality and will pass Congressional confirmation.

Also, I don't need any of your lessons.

Prosecute Hillary? "We have to move forward"

Torture works? "Well, General Madd Dogg Mattis thinks its not very important"

Climate change? "I have an open mind about it"

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but what Trump could do is pretty much up in the air at the moment

Trump doesn't have to do that much to dismantle net neutrality. All he has to do is sign bills put in front of him and appoint people to the FCC that are against the latter. He's not president yet, so he hasn't done the former, but he is in the process of the latter.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-fcc-idUSKBN13H02...

This doesn't usually happen because CA/NY usually vote D, Texas usually votes R, Illinois has been voting D for a while now, and Florida/Pennsylvania are swing states; (Florida usually votes R) although, the usual suspects have passed voter suppression laws.

This system doesn't protect smaller states by design, it is, as it always was, supposed to prevent the rule of mob and a demagogue from being elected. Unfortunately, due to an extremely misguided sense of party loyalty, here we are. At best it's an arbitrary ruling that can be exploited by someone who will lose the popular vote.

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

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?

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.

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

So, how about this - instead of weighing electoral college votes by location, we could weigh electoral college votes by education level. That way, people with higher education gets more of say than people with lower education.

Pro-Trumpers need to explain why giving giving geographic weighting should be more valuable than giving educational weighting. There are a million factors that elections could be adjusted for.. why should we pick geography as a factor over anything else? Why should farmers be weighed more than University professors?

Is there something more special about farmers than university professors? Which one is more important for a modern economy?

How about this, we can weigh votes by race - black votes more than white votes. Isn't that just as valid as weighing farmer votes over urban votes?

Yes, this is a personal anecdote. No, I don't have a citation.

Hope for the best, but expect and prepare for the worst.

The reclassification of services necessary to make the ruling in the first place was (I believe) over-reach.

But, people appear to like the outcome, so they don't quibble with the methods.

I don't dislike that particular outcome, but worry about the executive branch unilaterally extending their own purview. That territorial expansion would allow for a lot of decisions that I might like a lot less. That probably just means that I worry too much about what will happen when a guy I don't like is in charge...

The arrogance and entitlement of middle america is really getting to be too much. Now your votes should count more just "so you can have a say too".

Maybe you shouldn't have abandoned unions, maybe you shouldn't have abandoned the left, maybe you shouldn't have expected the GOP to place your interests first. It's been almost 50 years since "The Silent Majority" and apparently nothing's changed.

Maybe the problem isn't everyone else. Maybe the problem is you.