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Comment by mfringel | Hacker News Reader

I'm inclined to agree, but can you say more about that?

The EC was arguably created (in it's existing format) to protect the interests of southern, slave-owning states. At the time, roughly analogous to resisting tyranny of the majority (as the urban north had more people, especially as slaves weren't fully recognized as people), but not exactly.

And we should not forget that the balance of the EC (as it relates to the ratio of Senators and Congressmen to residents) has swung hugely in favor of rural states. As the number of residents per district has grown, with a capped number of Congressmen, states like CA and TX have effectively lost representation. If we adjusted the size of a Congressional district down to match the population of the smallest state, and increased the size of the house accordingly, the large states would pick up quite a few Congressmen, and therefore Electors.

1. I take your point regarding the EC's pro-slavery origins, but it doesn't invalidate the larger purpose. People can wield good tools for bad causes.

2. I also take your point about proportionality, but, again, it doesn't invalidate the larger purpose (nor is it an argument for a nationwide popular vote). If the proportions are wrong, then the correction is to adjust the proportions.

At its inception, the EC was a parliament solely elected to pick the president; as a result, not all the electors in a state elected the same person. This started changing in the 1800s; states that wanted to increase campaign time in their state moved toward the winner-takes-all method, which then every state had to move to if they wanted to matter equally.

If EC votes in a state were allocated according to popular vote, then the existing system would be a lot fairer. Proportional EC essentially reduces the advantage of campaigning in swing states, since many more states become swing states due to the relative ease of swinging a single EV vs. a whole state. And it manages to do so without completely screwing over smaller states.

I did some napkin math a while ago for this, but if this was the case, Bush v Gore would've been decisively for Gore, Bush v Kerry would have been as close as OTL Bush v Gore, and Trump's margin of victory shrinks to about 20 electoral votes from 77.

I explored the same thing but got different results from you. Bush v. Gore almost a dead tie and 2016 a slight Hillary win.

http://mrgris.com/blog/2016-12-06-538-problems-but-a-swing-s...

"Back of the napkin" was quite literal. Staring at tables on the internet makes you go blind if you do it hard enough.

You pretty much made the case for why claiming that the EC was not intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority is an inaccurate statement.

You need the state level contests to moderate elections. Just because reactionaries control one party today doesn't change that. The country would have been a shambles if the northern political machines of the 20th century had unchecked power.

>The EC was arguably created (in it's existing format) to protect the interests of southern, slave-owning states. At the time, roughly analogous to resisting tyranny of the majority (as the urban north had more people, especially as slaves weren't fully recognized as people),

I don't know that this is true.

1789, 1st Congress

Slave States (40 representatives)

Delaware 1

New Jersey 4

New York 6

Maryland 6

Georgia 3

North Carolina 5

South Carolina 5

Virginia 10

Free States (25 representatives)

Connecticut 5

Massachusetts 8

New Hampshire 3

Pennsylvania 8

Rhode Island 1

New York and New Jersey had pretty small numbers of slaves, so while they did allow slavery, they were more politically aligned with the free states.

Another factor is that there was a much larger disparity in numbers of voters than there was in number of people. Many of the southern states had very restrictive requirements (such as needing to own a large amount of property) to be allowed to vote while while northern states had less restrictive requirements. In the 1789 election[0] Massachusetts had more than four times as many votes cast as Virginia while having fewer electoral votes and New Hampshire had more votes cast than Virginia while having less than half as many electoral vote. Massachusetts and New Hampshire alone had more than half of the votes cast in that election.

The biggest reason for the electoral college was to accommodate the aristocratic tendencies of some of the states. Contrary to what is often claimed, it wasn't intended to prevent the large states from dominating the small states; ironically it was the exact opposite. They wanted to prevent a tiny state like New Hampshire from being able to out vote, Virginia, the largest state.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e...

The southern states were counting 3/5 of each slave. Without the 3/5 Compromise and the EC, the North would have dominated Congress and the WH.

Its a remnant from a time when the US was a collection of states instead of a single country. The proverbial change of "the US are" to "the US is". The President is elected by the States just as Senators used to be. It was not about individual representation in the federal government, but representation by the States. This is what the EC was for. The States elect the President.

The US started out as a federation more like how Switzerland is. But over time more and more authority was placed into the federal government and more and more cultural identity was placed there as well. So there are vestiges of government that persist from that earlier time.

Any idea why centralisation happened to the US but not to Switzerland?

> Its a remnant from a time when the US was a collection of states instead of a single country.

This is stated as fact, but it's begging the question, of course, because the tension described is exactly what we're talking about. The United States still are a collection of states, to varying degrees, and the degrees are exactly what's under scrutiny here.

That's not a remnant from another time; it's the central conflict, still relevant today.

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