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Comment by sam0x17 | Hacker News Reader

So basically, what you're saying in a nutshell is that if you live in a rural area, your vote should count hundreds of times more than that of someone living in a heavily populated area. Sounds like a really good way to get to where we are today with congress.

How this stuff got into the constitution (or whatever) in the first place baffles me. The electoral college literally makes where you live determine how much your vote is worth. How is that not a huge violation of everything this country is supposed to stand for?

Put another way, it's like we care more about land than we do about people. Wtf? It's We the People not We the Vast Tracts of Essentially Empty Land.

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What is this country supposed to stand for? Leaning on that trope to buttress a subjective opinion is a paper thin argument. This country is not supposed to stand for one thing. The State system was intended to allow for multiple interpretations of religion, culture, and identity. The federal system was intended to keep the State system balanced and safe. The rural areas deserved more influence because their contribution to the long term continuity of the country was something that couldn't be measured by population alone.

Shocking to your sensibilities and education level though it may be, land has always been more important to stability, peace, and prosperity than individual people. It is only in hyper consumer states (like the US coastal cities) where people find themselves so immensely important that they thing the Individual is the highest value commodity in society. They are programmed to believe this from a very early age, as well a falsely assumed omniscience about values, ethics, and truth. The vast majority of humans on the planet are far more in touch with their actual value relative to the system as well as their capabilities in that system. This is why most humans pack up and leave when the system is against them on both counts, as opposed to digging in and fighting back.

None of this would be baffling (in terms of the Electoral College) if you took the time to read the primary sources regarding it. I can understand how it would be surprising and baffling if you are operating off of third hand, highly subjective editorializing.

No state is in any position to try to leave the union at this point for a variety of reasons. If we rule that out, what utility does "keeping underpopulated states happy" provide, exactly?

The state system wasn't really intended to do anything, rather it was a byproduct of the fact that the founding fathers had to appease the colonies into wanting to unite as a larger entity without losing their local identity. It was merely a concession.

So electoral votes are largely a legacy feature from a bygone era where we had to worry about states trying to leave the union over minor grievances.

Combine that with the fact that cities and coastal states in general brain-drain rural areas, and you realize it's probably a dumb idea to give the brain-drained regions of the country the most decision-making power. The electoral college does just that -- it selectively gives vastly more voting power to the less intelligent regions of the country.

That said, it would also be wrong (both morally, and in the ill-advised sense) to have a meritocracy where high intelligence means your vote counts more. Since intelligence largely tracks with socioeconomic status because of access to different opportunities, this devolves to your classic rich noblemen making all the decisions situation with its obvious pitfalls.

So if you are trying to come up with an effective and fair system for electing a leader, sticking with the popular vote makes a lot more sense than affirmative action for places where no one wants to live.

The stupidity behind the electoral college is reflected at the local level in the stupidity of the system that allows for gerrymandering -- if there were rules in place forcing political districts to all be equal in terms of the % of the total population of the state that they represent, politicians couldn't manipulate the map for partisan purposes (at least as much as they do now).

As for the founding fathers' intentions, who can say? There was nothing really special about them anyway, they were more a product of their time than anything else. Now we are stuck with their mess.

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