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Comment by vturner | Hacker News Reader

I wish someone with $$ would start plastering this message everywhere the absurd "get rid of the elctoral college" debate comes up. We are not a democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. We are a federation of states that is supposed to have most of the control in their region and sacrifice a little bit of control to the federal government for purposes of defense and commerce. Your "democracy" should be your state legislature, but sadly authoritarians of the past have taken that away.

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Your argument seems confused to me, but maybe I don’t quite understand, can you elaborate? We do have state level democracy. The electoral college’s purpose is solely for presidential elections, not for local elections. Why shouldn’t we have a democracy for presidential elections? Your reasons given (local control) don’t apply to federal elections. Even with the electoral college, we’re pretty close to democratic representation for president anyway, and the discrepancy between what we have, a federal republic, and a pure democracy doesn’t serve the same purpose that it used to. So why should we keep it? Why is the proposal to get rid of the electoral college “absurd”? What do you mean about authoritarians taking away state level democracy?

The structure of the Federal government is fundamentally geared towards mediating the relationships between the various states, as that was its original purpose. Actual governance of the populace was the purview of state government.

Over time, however, decisions about domestic law have increasingly been made at the Federal level. At this point, the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution is used to justify almost any regulation that the Federal government wants to pass. When that doesn’t work, availability of Federal tax money is made contingent on states aligning their laws with whatever national policy is.

Also, the legislature has been ceding its rule-making authority to the executive by passing broadly-worded legislation and leaving the details to administrative rules committees that work for the executive.

I suspect that ‘vturner is suggesting the correct fix is to shift the overall balance of power back towards the more democratic parts of government instead of reforming the election process of the government’s chief clerk.

Thanks for insightful comments. Its sometime easy to forget that USA means union of states. Each state has a freedom to create its own laws within the limits of constitution to satisfy needs of its population. The way I see it, different states present different philosophy and lifestyle. People are free to get attached to the one they feel most aligned. President is supposed to be representing this union of states, not just the major population centers.

This exactly. If the issue is people feeling/being disenfranchised, changing how we elect the President isn't going to help. It just reinforces the idea that we're a monarchy and the job of the rest of the government is to do the will of the President. We can do better than this!

The Presidential horse race every 4 years is mostly for television. Federalism works because you want the decisions that affect your life the most to have the most direct accountability.

Nothing reinforces the feeling of disenfranchisement than having no direct impact on how the most powerful single government is elected.

The Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic and the lack of democracy de-legitimizes the office.

Why does direct democracy confer legitimacy? Does the Supreme Court not have legitimate authority? I don't see a correlation.

because legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed? Supreme Court justices are picked by popularly elected Senators.

It's not even direct democracy, its a representative democracy. Except in the case of the presidency we're not even allowed to directly pick our representative in the executive branch.

Thank you for the very reasonable and rational explanation! That does broaden my interpretation of vturner’s comment.

Your comment seems broadly true and open minded as well. I have a couple of questions, possibly from a devil’s advocate perspective, purely for the sake of discussion because I’m curious:

When you say the government was originally geared to mediate the states and that real governance was supposed to be states, what does the Supremacy Clause in the constitution mean to you? It was there originally from the start, and it declares the federal government the winner of conflicting state and federal laws.

Second, while I am personally a fan of states’ rights in a bunch of specific scenarios, it makes little sense to me to talk vaguely about who should be in control of most laws without a specific list of regulations in mind. Where can I find a list of federal laws that are broadly viewed to be overreach by most people, that most people agree should be in state control?

Acknowledging that there is politics here, that it’s a fight over control, and your point that the Federal government is leveraging tax money, is it possible that the natural order of things is for laws to drift in the federal direction anyway - as travel across state boundaries has become faster and faster, as the internet blurs the lines, as state laws individually become closer together, as we see more needs for consistent standards nationally, etc.? When the constitution was written it took a minimum of days to even communicate with another state, let alone spend money, purchase goods, or visit. The geographic, financial, and communication boundaries between states has literally almost disappeared compared to what it used to be.

Unfortunately, Aside from identifying general trends, I haven’t looked into the issues enough to hold any strong opinions, nor am I in a position to cite any specifics without significant research. I think you may be right about increased interconnectedness naturally leading to a larger federal role in everyday governance.

As far as the supremacy clause goes, it’s necessary for the treaty to work. The states are agreeing to give up some of their sovereign rights to be executed by the federal government instead, in the interests of the union. The bulk of the Constitution describes exactly those rights that the states are giving up, and this clause confirms that they can’t pass legislation to opt out of individual federal decisions they don’t like that fall within those bounds. Without it, the federal government would in practice only be able to make suggestions— a situation that led to bankruptcy under the Articles of Confederation.

I’m actually more concerned about the shift in power from the legislature to the executive. As the role of the federal government has grown, it feels like every executive agency has grown its own miniature legislature and judiciary that are primarily beholden to the executive. Agency regulations are law, so why aren’t they drafted and approved by an arm of the relevant congressional committee?

Read the 10th amendment.

Okay, I read the sentence again, and I appreciate you reading my comment and responding to me, but I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. Maybe you could elaborate?

The 10th amendment says that when there isn’t already a constitutional directive or a conflicting state law, then either the states or the people can make their own new rules, right?

The electoral college is a constitutional directive, but are you saying you’re favor of an amendment abolishing the electoral college, and suggesting the 10th amendment provides grounds for “the people” to democratically elect a president?

> We are not a democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus.

I do. This sounds much better than a federation of states with weird layers of indirection based on borders drawn by historical accident or anachronistic geographic boundaries like rivers.

Say you are in the 49% in the democracy that is for a policy, but 51% are against it. Do you really want that 51% to tell you what to do?

That is preferable to having only the people in a handful of swing states pick the president (who, by executive orders, tells me what to do).

A federation would be fine if it was a proper one. One where cities have an equal position against their state inasmuch as they represent their residents and those residents have more say over the state government as a result. Today, we have a dated system which refuses to update its political infrastructure where it's needed. Now, more than ever, there's a need to make more direct levers of power to the citizens of a given location and less power to the technocrats and bureaucrats which 'represent' them.

Do you think any reform is ill-advised? What would for instance be wrong with giving each state 1 vote in the EC? Upon naive inspection, that would at least get rid of battleground/swing states somewhat.

We've been giving up control to the federal government because more often than not, the local and state governments have failed [1]. Political corruption, corporate interests etc somehow don't just vanish and go away when you give power to the states.

There's a balance to be made between federal and state government powers. And ultimately the electoral college is one of the things that needs to go, because it unfairly tips the system in favor of extremely rural areas whom influence policy that then directly harm those living in more urban environments.

[1] https://www.insider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-before-ep...

The point isn't that corruption goes away when power is given to the states, the point is that the state is easier to protest than the federal government. I can get to my state capital in ~4 hours of driving, but it would take me >40 hours to get to DC. The electoral college is better than straight democracy.

It should be obvious by now that if that were the case, scenarios like what happened in Flint, Michigan should've ended with Rick Snyder in jail and more action taken.

And in cases like these, the federal government is needed in order to apply some culpability to times when the local government behaves negligently. Not to mention this only really works if the state government actually cares about local issues, otherwise you end up with cases such as states vying to ban gay marriage because there's a tyranny of the majority at the local state level and a tyranny of the minority at the federal level.

It's a lose-lose situation because then the rural votes dictate not only the things within their state but the things that are completely outside of their purview.

> the federal government is needed in order to apply some culpability to times when the local government behaves negligently.

And who will apply culpability when the federal government behaves negligently? Creating a higher institution to address the issue just shifts the problem of apply culpability to an institution that you have even less chance of influencing.

The answer is that we have a system of checks and balances in the federal government which are meant to ensure that one branch doesn't overshadow another. The states and the electoral college were supposed to add another layer of said balance, but what they've done is shifted power further towards the federal government advancing rural interests.

Many of those rural areas could not survive without the federal government's aid because they already suffer from dwindling infrastructure and population. Now if you want to break apart the federal government entirely from the equation, then you would also have to agree to let those rural areas die out instead of being propped up through subsidy and taxes from the urban taxpayer's pocket. Otherwise you would be arguing that not only do the rural states get to dictate policy, but they also get to benefit from the GDP generated by the urban states. Why is it fair then, for the federal government to give preferential treatment?

You just made his point.

The balance of power is working precisely because the legislative is very much majority rule.

As such, if the executive did away without the electoral college, it would also overrepresent populous, majority populations.

By doing away with the electoral college , you literally destroy whatever is left of the Republic

All the real money is already on the side of preserving the electoral college. You should examine why this is and reassess.

There are plenty of good things in this world that bad people can twist to their benefit.

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