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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

But how is it any more fair to let three large metro areas override the preferences of most of the rest of the country?

That isn't the alternative. The alternative is to let the sum of each equal individual vote determine the outcome. Metro areas don't vote. Neither do farms. People vote. Just like most of us presumably agree that gender, ethnicity, etc. shouldn't affect the impact your vote has, I don't think that the amount of land you own or the population density of the area you live in should affect the impact of your vote.

This is how you get the Roman/Parisian mobs that were the downfall of the Roman and French Republics. All you have to do is promise the mob everything and they'll give you the support to suppress the provinces. The Founders had the Roman example to draw on, as well as Venice's devolution into an urban oligarchy.

With the electoral college al you have to do is appeal to the mob in the swing states. Then you give that select group of voting Americans the ability to suppress the rest of the population. How is that any better?

Yes, you can just appeal to a smaller mob which has the same political influence as larger mobs.

These things aren't static- the South (and the major religions) used to be solidly Democrat, California gave us Reagan, etc. This changed in my lifetime and I'm not that old. You start taking your base for granted,you end up wondering how you lost.

You need to review your Constitutional history. The Constitution mandates that the president is elected by the states, via electors who are selected in each state "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." It's not a direct popular vote and never has been.

I am well aware of how it is. I just think it ought to be different.

I don't see the parent comment implying the US had ever used popular vote, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

Furthermore, the Constitution can change. That's why there's amendments; quite a few have already gone through, in fact.

Because one person, one vote. I don't give two shits how many acres you own, you should get one vote (and that was the justification from the beginning -- a compromise so slaveholding scum would be overcounted). The country would have been so much better had Sherman executed the treasonous slavers, rather than burning the land. But alas, the story of the US is "well-meaning moderates" bending over themselves to placate backwater racist scum.

Slavery was added to the Articles and Constitution because South Carolina's support was deemed as critical to the rebellion against Britain.

The other colonies begrudgingly added this, opting for changes to the wording of the clause to enshrine slavery into the constitution, and did everything they could to violate their constitution until South Carolina wrote them back saying it is best if South Carolina exited.

"most of the rest of the country" by square miles, perhaps, but citizens are not square miles. Why should someone's vote count less because they happen to live in a more densely populated area?

Right now, the electoral college lets large metro areas override the preferences of rural voters in their state. The rural voter in Michigan gets outsized representation, the urban voter in California gets downsized representation, and the rural voter in California gets no representation at all.

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