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Comment by greendragon | Hacker News Reader

Tyranny of the majority is a major concern for democratic systems, hence the many protections against it. A system based on pure population majority is no less manipulable, you would end up seeing candidates campaign hard in the ~25 most dense cities and ignore the rest of the country.

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That's because tyranny of the minority is typically not a major concern for democratic systems... Except in the United States, because it happens so damn frequently. In no other country does the opinion of ~2% of the population (Swing voters in swing states) take precedence over everything else.

Your response completely ignores, for example, the rural California vote. Those people don't live in dense cities, but their opinions are completely ignored, because they don't live in the right state.

Alternatively, why not double down on avoiding tyranny of the majority? Make a native American's vote count as ten white votes, make an African American's vote count as three white votes... The justification for it is about as good as making a Wisconsin farmer's vote count for that of three California farmers.

> In no other country does the opinion of ~2% of the population (Swing voters in swing states) take precedence over everything else.

It doesn't here, either. In order for it to "take precedence", it has to be the swing 2% - the 2% in the middle. That is, if the 98% of the country voted differently, a different swing 2% would be where the election swung.

Except in this case, rural CA voters ultimately got what they wanted, since they on average supported Trump over Hillary.

Also, if we went to a national popular vote, would their concerns be more likely to be heard? Or would the candidates just rally at LA/SD and SF/SV?

They would have also gotten what they voted if elections were done away with, and Trump were announced a winner by fiat. That doesn't make it a good system.

There are two problems for them.

1. Unequal distribution of EC votes.

2. State-based winner-take-all distribution of EC votes.

Yes, their concerns would be far more likely to be heard with the elimination of #1, and #2. They can be completely ignored because of #2, and even if they couldn't be, then due to #1, there are better places to focus on.

Under a popular vote system, with the margins for victory as they are, nobody would be able to ignore the rural vote, as a whole. Right now, that is exactly what happens - it is ignored - except in a handful of states (Which, strangely enough, receive an overwhelming amount of federal subsidies - it's no accident that ~75% of farming subsidies go to only 10% of farmers.)

First off, most Americans live in city's, but rural voters would still be just as valuable as anyone else. So, the real change is removing extra power from people who only got it from accidents of history. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Second, having rotating senate elections, many votes requiring more than 50% to pass, and lifetime appointments to the supreme court are all designed to hold back a pure majority.

PS: I would suggest national proportional representation to the house, and instant runoff elections for the senate and president, with senate boundary chosen by a fixed public algorithm.

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