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Comment by Blackthorn | Hacker News Reader

Well, in an actual democracy you'd have one person being worth one vote. That certainly doesn't exist where I live (USA), and it doesn't exist with corporate voting shares either (where money = votes), so that analogy is pretty much bunk at the start.

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I've heard various 'arguments' that the US is not a democracy, but not based on the fact that one person-one vote is untrue; what do you mean by this? Is it something to do with the electoral college system, or perhaps the large class of disenfranchised persons?

Short answer: the US has two senators for each state, some states have much more population than others, so proportionally a vote in Wyoming counts "more" than a vote in California. This has direct effects in the legislative branch (the Senate) and indirect effects in presidential elections (electoral college) and thus also indirectly in the Supreme Court (nomination + approval).

Well, the US also has the House of Representatives where representation is proportional.

A bicameral congress most certainly does not disqualify the entire system from being considered a democracy.

Yeah, I am not trying to make a political statement, I'm just explaining why people say that

Here's an example. There are 600,000 people in Wyoming. They have 2 senators.

There are 700,000 people in Washington DC. They have zero senators. There are over 3 million people in Puerto Rico. They also have zero senators.

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