Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Wasn’t that part of the original intent?

Divining original intent is weird because it's from an era where not even adult white males had universal suffrage. Prior to the mid 19th century, nearly all states required you to be a land-owner to vote. I've always viewed the electoral college as an enlightenment-era hack to work around a scenario where one state would "liberalize" suffrage to garner outsized influence during a national election. If this was 1790, non-land owners deciding an election would be the feared "tyranny of the majority" the founders sought to prevent; and that's not even counting suffrage for women and non-whites.

At least in theory (putting aside any voter suppression efforts), the US today has near universal suffrage for all adults, with the only remaining restrictions being placed on felons (of which we have many). So it really doesn't make sense: We functionally have the popular vote, but we have this weird legacy layer on top that, in 2000 and 2016, selected someone who lost the popular vote.

We don't have to divine the original intent. There are historical documents that lay out what the founders were thinking, not least of which is The Federalist Papers #68.

[1]: https://www.historycentral.com/elections/Federalist.html

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68

Using the federalist papers as an example of a straight forward reading of intent is pretty bold.

I for one won’t pay any tribute to them than exceeds their merit.

The federalist papers were intended to convince Americans to support the new constitution so it would get ratified, so I feel that Alexander Hamilton deliberately going out of his way to discuss how it was supposed to work captures something about the intent of those who ratified it based on that sales pitch.

There is approximately 200 years of the federalist papers being used in court decisions and it’s been controversial the whole time.

The Wikipedia article on them has a surprisingly good discussion on their use in the courts.

The intent of those that ratified it varies wildly. The making of the Constitution was very contentious, and Hamilton definitely picked a side.

It's also just a few members of the founders who wrote the Federalist papers. It's difficult to know what the majority of them actually thought.

Eh...lately one controversy has been the plan to ask on the 2020 census (used for apportioning electoral votes) whether or not one is a citizen. It turns out that non-citizens (typically immigrants) are counted in the census but are ineligible to vote. Which means, much as the 19th century EC accounted for “indirect representation” of non-voters, the contemporary one accounts has similar effects for eg recent immigrants.

Right one always gets funny looks saying it should have been 0/5ths not 3/5ths of anyone bared to vote, and that would have dramatically changed 19th century politics (hopefully for the better).

I think the person with the popular vote should have lost.

The EC performed to spec in my opinion. Nobody, myself included, likes that outcome, but the truth is Clinton didn't do the work needed to win the election.

Now, she had a number of challenges, but she was also running to sell the world on the idea of her being the leader too. No excuses. I feel strongly about that.

The primary reason I feel that way is she flat out could have won.

A shift in campaign strategy, something her own staff urged her to do many times as they saw the numbers, would have sealed the deal. Visit Wisconsin, do some real work in the Rust Belt, and talk about jobs, not just education, or other similar things that put the fault on those who are expected to vote, and she would have won easily.

What actually happened was a run on popular vote totals. I'm told that was to increase the legitimacy of her win, and lay the foundation for a mandate type win. Ok, that's all fair, valid, reasonable, but for the fact that the basic work all that is predicated on simply was not done.

The EC more or less forces that work to get done too.

I'm fine with the EC as it exists today. An awful lot of the EC discussion is driven by a bad outcome, and I am just not sure that makes sense, or at least it does not make sense without a super honest, raw analysis of what actually did happen.

There was very little if any grousing about the EC compared to today (there was actually some speculation that Trump might win the popular and lose the EC) and each side agreed to the rules ahead of time.

Whining about it now is kinda like crying that you lost a game of Chess even though you took the most pieces.

Yes, I saw that too.

I really like your Chess analogy.

Fact is Clinton did not have her priorities in order and she lost because her choices did not result in her doing the work to win. They did result in a large pop vote total though.

Sure seems to me this is a discussion on how best to run a campaign that offers up a compelling VOTE FOR proposition to win, rather than a "let's ditch the EC" conversation.

-----

Edit, due to rate limit, intended for comment below.

You are right. It's not!

So then, those people looking to be leaders should take the rules in play at the time we are making the democracy happen pretty seriously right?

I think so, which is precisely why I authored the comment above. Doing the work to win the election involves working the process as it is defined at the start of the contest, not what one may wish were true at that time.

Secondly, should we change that process, and I'm not opposed to doing that, should we not change that process based on actual problems, not contrived ones based on poor judgement?

I will read any response with great interest -->Tomorrow. The rate limit is not a negative thing. Time to move on to better things. Cheers all!

It's not a game. Democracy is supposed to be about capturing the will of the demos and that is what gives the government legitimacy.

If you want the will of the People you certainly wouldn't give Hillary the election. You do realize she only captured a small minority of the entire voting age population right? and even less people really wanted her there for her own sake.

What would happen if you rally all the assorted fringe groups that are currently dispersing their votes and unite them with all the mainstream voters who are holding their nose as well as all the couch potato nonvoters and came up with a candidate a truly comprehensive electorate would really end up picking?

You'd probably throw both Drumpf and Hillary out and put in (another) Hollywood megastar or some charismatic Bible thumper.

I think we can pretty safely retire the debate on if it would serve its intended purpose, at this point.

I disagree, Trump wasn’t a president that should really trigger the failsafe of the elector college. That’d be more if we were electing someone that was a clear threat. Trump was and is not a clear threat to Americans. He’s pretty incompetent and honestly still don’t know if he’s worse than the alternative(s).

It's original intent requires a world in which news took weeks to travel, and communication was too slow.

But that's not tge world we've got anymore.

A world that moves faster is absolutely the original intent of the EC which is more essential now than ever before.

Rule by a demagogue is the primary weakness of a democracy and it's a pretty bad one at that.

That's already what congress is for, the US system just gives too much power to the president, while having it a directly elected position, so it has to have this complicated system which is entirely broken.

Parliamentary Democracies have fared much better in recent times.

Yes, thats what congress is for in the legislative branch. In the executive branch the EC provides that function.

You're forgetting that we are Constitutionally allowed 1 congress rep per 30k. Right now it's at 1 per 790k. Thats already demagogue territory.

Also, forgetting the 17th Amendment and the original intent of Senators.

You have a very narrow way of rationalizing the destruction of an actual bulwark against tyranny.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com