The Electoral College Was Terrible from the Start | Hacker News Reader

The Electoral College Was Terrible from the Start

theatlantic.com

16 pointssmacktoward6 comments

> the electoral system is grossly undemocratic and devised in large part as a protection for slave states

The electoral system is deliberately undemocratic and devised in large part as a protection for small states from large ones. It's a democratic system, just not a direct democratic system. Your votes do count.If you live in a winner-take-all-state and you don't like that you live in a winner-take-all-state, work to change that at the state level!

My personal view is that each state should have two electors chosen by the state legislatures (similar to how senators were chosen through 1912) and the rest popularly elected district-by-district. This preserves the federal character of the election without giving the illusion of disenfranchisement to anyone.

I'm glad someone else understands this. Every time I read about the Electoral College on HN or reddit, it reads as if Americans don't know about their own country's history, nor do they understand the definition of representative democracy.

The electoral college is the best among non-optimal solutions for solving the game theory challenge of competing entities (states), who are incentivized to become independent, working together when natural conflicts arise over finite resources.

Some additional commentary from another law professor:

http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2019/09/the-electoral-college-is-ta...

Bullet points:

- The EC is a particularly bad form of indirect election. It does not have the democratic virtues of parliamentarianism. And as critics note, it leads to huge distortions in how candidates campaign.

- The EC does give small states a modest advantage, because a state's electoral votes get a boost from equal representation in the Senate. But that's also a disadvantage insofar as state laws (everywhere but Maine and Nebraska) giving the statewide winner all of a state's electoral votes incentivize campaigning in larger states. Meanwhile, small states are roughly evenly divided between blue and red. Counting DC as a state (because it has 3 electoral votes), here are the ten smallest states, along with their presidential lean: Wyoming (R); Vermont (D); DC (D); Alaska (R); North Dakota (R); South Dakota (R); Delaware (D); Rhode Island (D); Montana (R); Maine (D). That's a 5/5 partisan split. Moreover, contrary to the claim that the EC systematically favors rural over urban states, several of those jurisdictions (DC, Delaware, and Rhode Island) are among the most densely populated in the country. It's true that the EC currently gives a modest advantage to the Republicans, but ... that is not likely to be true over the long run. The EC is undemocratic but it is not systematically unDemocratic.

- Following the Reconstruction Amendments, there are no slave states and thus there is no slave state bonus. Thus, the one aspect of the EC that associated it with slavery was expressly repealed.

I think I learned about the Electoral College when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade, so 10 or 11 years old, and my first thought was "Then our votes really don't count and it's a rigged system".

My teacher tried to explain why it was set up this way but there was just no getting around it, it is rigged and our votes do not count.

50 years later and we're finally seeing some pushback, though I'm not convinced anything will change anytime soon.

I’m not so sure I buy that argument. Larger states have more elected congressional officials balanced by smaller states having more senate votes per state person. The electoral college still gives heavier weights to states by population. Ultimately, from a game theory and incentive prospective, a state should try and be a battle ground state in order to get more political attention. This likely happens only when the state is suffering from more turmoil or problems. If the problems persist, people can move to a new state.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com