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Comment by hannasanarion | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think that tyranny of the majority is a bad thing?

Because, without embarrassment at the facetiousness of the straightforward answer, it's a tyranny i.e. it (possibly) restricts or removes the liberty of individuals, sometimes with a big dollop of direct harm like violence.

Do you disagree?

And why do you think that tyranny of the minority is better?

That's a false dichotomy. The alternative isn't tyranny of the minority, it's a system that takes account of the views of everyone, by forcing candidates to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate.

If you want a system to appeal to a wide spectrum of the electorate, there are a large number of dimensions that are far better then geographic address. Gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

For some reason, though, I never see supporters of the electoral college feel that it's right and proper to give equal political power to social minority groups (Only geographical minority groups. As if where you live is more important to your interests than who you are.)

states, not geographical units.

Because states are political units. If you don’t like the laws of one state you can move to another, and this extends to the state's voting power when choosing a president.

As to your innovation in voting, if you accept immutable aspects of identity as the basis for voting rights you're opening the door to some terrible ideas, like ethno-states and Jim Crow laws. Again, without embarrassment at the facetiousness, I'm also not sure how actually making the Jews have more power in 1930s Germany would've solved their problems. Would've probably fuelled grievances: "Hey, Adolf, you know that Jews really do run Germany?" Eeek!

The best way to protect minorities is by the protected freedoms of speech and to bear arms, not by weighting votes by arbitrarily chosen characteristics.

How do you take into account the views of everyone, when different segments of the electorate sometimes have irreconcilable desires and views, and not wind up with "tyranny" of some sort simply by having to set some policy that can't please everyone?

You can take account of everyone without pleasing them all. For example, in systems with run-offs or some kind of ranked choice, you need to appeal to voters who might not have you as their first choice, but whose second choice votes you need. That's better than being able to use a divisive strategy that appeals only to your base, and positively repels the rest.

We are talking about the electoral college, which enables tyranny of the minority.

Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.

The president isn't the president of “the people” but of the states. It says so right there on the tin: “President of the United States.”

Which means the president is and should be, elected by representatives of the states. The House of Representatives should be the only federal office directly voted on by “the people.” If that were the case, especially eliminating the direct election of senators, you’d see a much less divisive, gridlocked system where governance is more about public service and less about these election soap operas.

The office is called "President of the United States", not "President of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan".

Tyranny of the minority is normally just called tyranny, and we know what that looks like.

It's not this.

Most people are minorities in at least one aspect that they hold dear to their identity. Under tyranny of the majority, they risk finding that aspect made illegal.

Why do you think that tyranny of the minority is better?

Why do you assume there's an excluded middle, and that tyranny of one group over another is inevitable?

The Electoral College lets the minority choose the president against the will of the Majority. That is called tyranny of the minority. I want to know why you think that's a good thing.

So, for one, I don't - I'm mildly in favor of direct popular votes combined with some form of runoff voting (either IRV, STV, or approval voting).

But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem.

You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.

Do you think you are represented by the current system ? You get to complain about being in jail when you are in jail but when you are innocent and complaining does that make it better ?

Ballotpedia's congressional approval polling average: 20% (August 21, 2019)

Cambridge Analytica has shown the method to manipulate any political system. We are in for an "interesting" future.

> But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area.

This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either.

If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidential Candidate has ever gone stumping for those sweet sweet Wyoming voters?

Because it doesn't empower small states. It doesn't empower big states. It empowers closely contested states.

The electoral college makes no sense, it was not designed this way, the designers tried to get rid of it after they saw how it was being abused.

It's non-democratic, nonsensical, and there has been ~75% support for abolishing it for over 100 years but politicians have been holding off because it makes elections easier for them to fight because it lets them ignore most of the voters.

Does the EU presidency have a popular vote? Why aren’t the various leaders of the EU all German since Germany has the most people?

I love the electoral college. For those that bother to understand that America is a republic; the system was nearly perfectly designed. If we can get back to the original method of electing senators and back to the idea of “these United States” rather than “the United States,” we’d all be happier. States should have increased sovereignty. The 10th Amendment ought to matter.

Dude, the Electoral College takes sovereignty AWAY from the states, and concentrates it in only 4-5 states where the race is close.

If the Electoral College made every state matter equally, then candidates would be campaigning for support in every state equally. It is a fact that that's not what the Electoral College does.

Also, the Electoral College in its current form was not "designed". It was a mistake. The people who designed it, Hamilton and Madison, tried to get rid of it with constitutional amendments after they saw how it was being abused with "winner-take-all" laws.

You’re confusing where people campaign with who has influence. Wyoming, as a state, has as much influence as California - and that’s how it was designed. Nobody campaigns in either state very much, because their state wide preferences are mostly set - but that doesn’t mean they have no influence.

A majority of state electors pick the president. The president won the most states, so he is president.

In the EU, is Ireland less important than Germany? Why doesn’t Germany get to pick the EU president each time? Since Germany has over 80 million people, they could team up with France and simply own the EU. Ireland and Poland would be forced to go along with whatever Germany and France wanted. Or, they would leave the EU.

If California and New York picked the president every single time, why would other states bother staying in the Union? If you just have to win New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago, then every single policy proposal would simply be to benefit those voters alone. You could deny federal protections and funding to every other part of the country because you’d rather have more money to spend in New York City. It would become just like the Hunger Games where the “districts” would serve the capitol.

The current system has worked for 200+ years. Just because some people didn’t like outcome, doesn’t make the system broken.

Pretty sure discarding the EC would lead to a defacto separation of the states. A bloodless civil war (hopefully bloodless).

It wouldn’t be bloodless, but it would be a civil war.

This guy is a witch. We should burn him. All those in favor?

It's an Electoral College witch burning, the majority said "no", but a lot of them live on the same street, so we're going to do it anyway, sucks to be you.

No it's against the HN guidelines:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Also, no witch burning.

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