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Comment by MrZongle2 | Hacker News Reader

"Depends on your viewpoint of the Electoral College vs Popular Vote of course."

I think Wikipedia succinctly provides a factual assessment in this case: "The United States Electoral College is the mechanism established by the United States Constitution for the indirect election of the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States. Citizens of the United States vote in each state and the District of Columbia at a general election to choose a slate of "electors" pledged to vote for a particular party's candidate."

One can argue about the merits of the popular vote, but as per the Constitution, elections are won according to Electoral College vote.

That's the rules. That's how it works. Since the 18th century, with little change.

Mrs. Clinton also had a chance to win a round of Yahtzee, if Rock-Scissors-Paper were used to determine the winner.

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And the writers of the Constitution didn't believe in Political Parties. Things didn't work out as they expected however.

The expectation was that each state would deadlock upon "local favorites" and then the House of Representatives would choose the winner.

Clearly, the Electoral College system is not working as designed, and I really do think its time that we start thinking about changing the constitution to make things more fair.

> That's how it works. Since the 18th century, with little change.

How in the world do you consider the 12th and 13th Amendments and the Apportionment Act of 1911 "little change"?

Would Mrs. Clinton have won in an alternative universe where the aforementioned alternations did not take place?

Yes. She would have won the Vice Presidency, as Trump became President.

Which only demonstrates the supreme idiocy of the original system our founding fathers envisioned. Its a good thing they gave us a mechanism to change the Constitution and the rules.

The founding fathers never tried to design a perfect system. They only hoped to make a "more perfect" system, that over time would improve upon itself.

And improve itself it has. Vice Presidents and Presidents now run together, instead of being #1 and #2 in the Electoral College. Black people can vote (and be more than 3/5ths a person), slaves have been outlawed, Women can vote. This country is one of continuous self-improvment (or at least, ATTEMPTED self-improvement)

>This country is one of continuous self-improvment (or at least, ATTEMPTED self-improvement)

yes, and last presidential election was such an event.

"Yes. She would have won the Vice Presidency, as Trump became President."

And what, exactly, would that have changed?

For one, Ms. Clinton would be the tiebreaking vote in the Senate.

Which means every "close call" vote in the Senate (including the Supreme Court Justice vote, various laws that have been passed this year, etc. etc.) would have only passed at the Pleasure of Ms. Clinton.

For another: Mr. Trump delegates a lot of tasks to the Vice President. The Vice President has a lot of power when it comes to implementing the President's policies.

Gorsuch was approved by the Senate by a 54-45, non-party-line vote. As for the remaining tiebreakers, one was the approval of DeVos as Education Secretary, two involve HHS items, and one was to push forward AHCA.

So far, none of the above have been groundbreaking.

As for your last point: the idea that Trump would delegate anything to VP Clinton in the same manner he delegates items to Pence is utterly absurd.

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and/or ideological battle. That's not a legit use of this site, and we ban accounts that do it. (We have to, because it's destructive of what HN is for.) Would you kindly (re)-read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this?

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