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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

Elections in which the majority of voters voted against the current President, as well as for the opposition party in Congress. US politics is fundamentally broken because the majority does not get its way, nor does the party getting the lion's share of votes get a say in major policy.

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While you are absolutely correct that the presidency was won by the minority of voters, its not really correct to say the same for congress. Within the house of reps where everyone is up for election every 2 years, the republicans won the popular vote. The senate is trickier as only a 3rd of senators have an election at any given time, thus the differentials are skewed based on which states are voting at a given time.

in 2016: democrats won 53% of the vote, republicans 43%

in 2014: democrats won 43% of the vote, republicans 52%

in 2012: democrats won 53% of the vote, republicans 43%

Part of the problem when comparing popular votes nationally is that you often have situations in CA where the two candidates running for office in the general election are both democrats. when the sum total of those votes is 10m, or the differential between the number of votes the republicans received nationally and the number democrats received nationally, is it fair to complain about a lack of representation? Other times within house races there wont even be a challenger.

US politics was intentionally designed such that the majority doesn't get its way. It's the single major innovation in liberal political philosophy in the past 500 years.

Saying "it's not democratic!" isn't a useful comment.

We know.

How about saying replacing the current system with proportional representation? Is that a useful comment?

There are good reasons not to have proportional representation, at least not purely proportional.

One downside to strictly proportional representation is that a concentrated majority can make decisions without collaborating/cooperating with the minority.

Example: Coastal states with large populations could just ignore the other states with small populations.

The US bicameral congress balances the proportional House against the non-proportional Senate.

The alternative right now is the minority having total control over nearly all federal and state bodies of government in the nation. I'll take the 'risks' of proportional representation over that...

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