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Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

It's too bad Americans cannot vote for some of the most prominent cabinet members the way they vote for President/Vice-President. Many of these appointees will have a more direct impact on people's lives but yet they have no say in who will represent them. Democracy?

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I don't think allowing the public at large to vote on cabinet members would be a good idea. The whole point of representative democracy is you elect a representative who seems reasonable and delegate specialized decisions — like who is the best climate authority — to your rep. (No, this obviously doesn't always work.)

We have representatives that do that. The prominent cabinet members have to make it through the Senate.

Rand Paul has already come out publicly against a couple of names floated for Secretary of State and is making noise that 2 or 3 other Senators (enough) are also concerned.

I don't really like Rand Paul, but at the moment I'm pretty glad that he actually has a coherent and strong ideology.

Rand Paul is safe in his ideology. Just like some of the useless liberals on the Democratic side, he can complain and sound moderate because his voice will sway very little.

Representative Democracy yeah. The people voted in Trump who now gets to appoint those positions.

Well they need to be let in by congress, who the public also voted for...

>The people voted in Trump

Well no. The people voted in Clinton, and the Electoral College upweighted some votes and downweighted others in a way that favors Trump. The EC once had a distinct purpose, but right now just seems to give Republicans a structural advantage, to the ultimate detriment of Democrats and Democrat-leaners in small or rural states.

That how our Representative Democracy works. Each system has its own way of voting and counting; that's ours.

And if it creates a de facto one-party state?

I didn't hear a lot of Democrats complaining about a "de facto one-party state" when they were chirping excitedly about gaining a permanent demographic majority a few months back, so forgive me if this sudden concern over the topic does not come off as entirely sincere.

No, they really didn't. The Electoral College is not some sort of state secret. Presidential elections have worked that way for over two hundred years. Complaining about the winner in the EC becoming President is like complaining that if we'd counted score by the number of strikeouts instead of runs, the Indians would have won the World Series. True, but so what? We don't count by strikeouts, we never have, and if the rules changed the teams would have played differently so you can't draw a useful parallel anyway.

A whole bunch of states turned on a few hundred thousand votes. It's hard to sell that as a structural advantage. The Republicans have probably paid more attention to the dynamics of it.

I agree that it is not healthy that ~10-12 states have higher importance in the presidential election, but it would be rather similar in a straight popular election.

An intermediate step would be to increase the size of the House of Representatives.

127 million voted in 2012, 120 million voted in 2016 despite population growth of ~0.7% per year. So, yay democracy? The plurality winner was the none of the above candidate, but the non-participants by and large think their none choice puts them outside politics, even though there is no such actual thing as no president. There will be one, it's a matter of which one, and not choosing one does have the same effect as choosing one.

And Americans vote in even fewer numbers for the non-presidential candidates. So it'd be almost the fringe that would be voting for cabinet members, were that possible.

What makes you think that would go over any better though? It's not like any of his cabinet picks have been surprising to anyone paying attention to his rhetoric and stances during the election.

I don't think climate was discussed in any of the presidential debates. It was a topic that was hardly even addressed. Most of discussion focused on ad hominem you did this or that.

Most Americans want action on climate by a pretty wide margin. I double this person would be elected if it was put to a vote.

He has explicitly and repeatedly said it's a Chinese hoax...

And he wants to dismantle the Paris Agreement.

as if they're smart enough? they're the ones who put this guy in charge in the first place and filled the house and senate with deniers as well.

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