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Comment by LordKano | Hacker News Reader

There's a very good reason why we don't use the popular vote for Presidential elections.

It's precisely because without the electoral college, small states would receive zero attention on national politics.

Why would anyone spend time courting votes anywhere north of New York when there's a much bigger payoff to be had working the rest of the eastern seaboard and the west coast?

To use your examples of Massachusetts and Ohio, why waste time on a campaign stop in Boston when you can hit Columbus? Columbus has a much larger population and one can also hit Detroit and Indianapolis in the same day to maximize their face time with the public.

Going to a popular vote will have consequences that people really need to thing about.

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Your response only makes sense if people identify on a state level.

Do voters in Ithaca, NY feel like they got attention when candidates visit New York City? How about Spokane, WA vs Seattle, WA?

When the US could tightly tie state views to voters, the electoral college MIGHT have made some sense, but now the issues are regional at best (coal belt, bible belt, etc), and not based on states. Now we're allowing a minority of the country to disproportionally influence elections (and legislation via the Senate).

To use your counterexample - Why stop in Boston indeed if you can hit Columbus? What difference does that make? I'm less worried about candidates _visiting_ places (because what good does that do?) and more about them being accountable to voters.

You are right about the consequences, but there are consequences to the system now.

> To use your examples of Massachusetts and Ohio, why waste time on a campaign stop in Boston when you can hit Columbus? Columbus has a much larger population and one can also hit Detroit and Indianapolis in the same day to maximize their face time with the public.

As opposed to the current system, where...why waste time on a campaign stop in Boston when you can hit Columbus? Ohio is a swing state and MA has voted Democratic for decades.

The point of a democracy is to represent actual human beings, not shapes on a map.

The point of a Republic is to temper the temporary fashions in political thinking with adherence to inviolable principles.

> The point of a Republic is to temper the temporary fashions in political thinking with adherence to inviolable principles.

That's arguably the point of a constitutional representative democracy as composed to an unlimited-powers direct democracy; as both of those are within the scope of systems to which the label "Republic" applies (as are many others), its a pretty odd notion to consider it the point of "a Republic" in any general sense, though it might be the point of the particular design of a particular republic.

No, the point of a republic is to abolish the monarchy. That's literally all the word means, in practice. It has nothing to do with granting more political power to people in Wyoming or Rhode Island than people in New York.

There are certain fundamental principles that this country was founded on, but some things were just 18th century political concessions.

This logic confounds me. Is there some inherent reason to disproportionately focus our national choices on the areas of the country with the fewest people (rural areas)?

I've lived in both the most rural and urban parts of the US, and it's clear that the current system massively discounts the will of people in urban areas in this stated endeavor of providing some kind of rural / urban "balance".

Depending on what you consider urban, the US is roughly split 80% urban, 20% rural.

To me, it seems unlikely that a ground effort in rural America would be completely neglected in a proportional system. If a party did neglect the ~20% of rural voters, it would seem to put itself at a disadvantage to other parties, especially given the lower relative cost of rural media markets.

We see the same problem with the Senate, where populous states such as Texas and California stand at a remarkable disadvantage to Montana and Wyoming in terms of representation. The voice of a constituent in Wyoming is 66 times that of one in California.

How can we call this system representative?

I don't see the composition of the Senate as a problem. I see it as balance. More populous states get greater representation in the House. The Senate serves to prevent more populous states from steamrolling less populous states.

It's a feature, not a bug.

Since the passage of the 17th amendment, Senators don't represent states, they represent people. And some of those people have vastly disproportionate representation by Senators.

Senators represent the people of their state.

Yes, and some of those people have a vastly disproportionate amount of representation.

The Constitution only provides for proportional representation in the House.

There were disparities in population during ratification. This was a necessary compromise to address the concerns of the smaller states.

The system is working as intended.

I'm well aware of the reason it was created that way. I just don't think it makes sense in an era where 3/4 of the states are just arbitrarily chosen chunks of land rather than formerly sovereign entities.

In my view, talking about how much representation a state deserves doesn't even make sense. People should decide elections, not some semi-arbitrary geographical boundaries. In the house, people are fairly represented. In the senate, people in smaller states are unfairly over-represented.

It's a feature like an "install our app" popup on every random mobile site is a feature. Someone thought it was a good idea and did it intentionally, but I think it's awful and was done for bad reasons.

> In the house, people are fairly represented.

Moreso than in the Senate, but beyond that, not actually fairly by most reasonable standards. Monatana's Congressional district has a little under a million people, each of Rhode Islands two districts has a little over a half-million. So the division into states creates an almost 2:1 advantage in representation for Rhode Islanders compared to Montanans in the House.

Now, that's not as lopsided as the 66:1 advantage Wyomingans have over Californians when it comes to representation in the Senate, but its not exactly equal representation, either.

If you look at the United States as a collection of State governments, it makes perfect sense. I'm surprised you are confounded by that logic.

It was actually the most controversial issue during the Constitutional Convention (See "The Great Compromise"). And read up on the Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist debates.

One of the main points is to not give all federal power to the top 9-10 states. Otherwise you end up with the situation where a few large cities are deciding things at the national level and there is no representation for rural areas.

As an extremely over-simplified example, imagine urban voters voting to outlaw tractors because "Tractors emit huge amounts pollution and nobody I know even uses a tractor! Those dirty farmers that I hear use them are dirtying up our air!"

Excellent metaphor.

That's precisely the kind of thing that would happen.

This system was created to prevent that kind of mob rule.

That might have been the rationale when it was originally introduced, but for the most part it has the opposite effect now, apart from a few very select "swing" states. Convince ~50k voters in Florida to switch allegiance and you win the state, and probably win the electoral college. Convince ~150k voters in Arkansas - a large proportion of that state's electorate - to switch allegiance and (i)it wouldn't affect who wins the state and (ii)it probably wouldn't affect who becomes President even if it turned blue.

Just because it means that local concerns in a couple of large states aren't going to be much of a factor in the presidency (Texas is more likely to freeze over than vote Democrat in the next election) doesn't mean that very many people in smaller states benefit from the electoral system.

There's the Senate to ensure that smaller states get their say in national politics.

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