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Comment by elric | Hacker News Reader

I don't know much about US elections, but from what I've seen in the news the last couple of weeks, I have to say I'm less than impressed. The rest of the world used to see the US as a beacon of democracy. But the country seems to be utterly incapable of organizing fair elections for its populace. Voter registration failures. Voter intimidation. Politicians literally redrawing maps in order to gain an advangate. A president casting doubt on the validity of mail-in ballots. Postal services being (deliberately?) interfered with before an election?

What the hell?

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This comment is going to be upvoted because it's America-in-its-current-form bashing and there's obviously truth to what you're saying the problems are. The dirty little secret is this IS American democracy at work. It has ALWAYS been rife with voter suppression tacts, and disenfranchisement at scale. The Internet and the current political chaos allows the world to see it all in its ugly glory, but there are many people alive who lived in a country with LAWS that prevented minorities from voting. If we were once the beacon of democracy, by those standards, we still are. It's just a pretty low bar.

I agree with the spirit of your statement. However, the VOting Rights Act places strict requirements that mostly prevented some of the most egregious forms of voter suppression that we are seeing today (strict ID laws, fewer polling places etc.). The VRA was gutted very recently and it has directly lead to a resurgence in these un democratic laws.

So for people who may have been vaguely aware of American democracy for the past few decades, it is a fact that America has become less democratic in that time.

> The rest of the world used to see the US as a beacon of democracy.

lol wut. The US has always been a flawed democracy [0].

0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

The US was downgraded in 2016, per your link. That’s hardly ‘always’.

Sounds political. We were a flawed democracy before Trump won too. Anyone forgetting we had a Presidential election decided by the Supreme Court 20 years ago?

2016 was when we saw the impact of eliminating certain oversight portions the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which happened in 2012/2013. After the 2013 court decision, you saw a resurgence in voter disenfranchisement efforts. So it probably has nothing to do with Trump, but with the consequences of dropping the ability to enforce critical parts of the VRA.

Hear hear. As someone who grew up in Europe in a couple of different countries, one opinion has always been the same in all countries: The US is a country that likes to brag about democracy and likes to "bring democracy to others" while having a poor implementation of it themselves.

> The US is a country that likes to brag about democracy and likes to "bring democracy to others" while having a poor implementation of it themselves.

I'm a lifelong American. I know my perspective is limited, but here's my perception:

- Politicians at the national level often brag in the manner you describe. (I could believe it's become less common in the last 10-20 years, but I haven't paid careful attention.)

- Almost no private citizen (in my circles, at least) thinks in those terms, or at least they don't openly speak that way. The most prevalent form of nationalism that I see amongst Americans is the feeling that various groups are unfairly disadvantaged by our national leadership's tolerance of bad trade deals with China, or (less often) failure to protect American workers from having to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs.

- Also, my impression is that a large majority of Americans hold our Congress and (often) Executive branches in very low regard.

I often hear that everybody hates the government, except for the person they voted in.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Perhaps we've skated on good luck so far. I think someone out there identified a bunch of huge (but vague) vulnerabilities in this country's foundation and has started exploiting them at the same time.

Senator Mike Lee wasn't just being honest, his statement that the US is not a democracy is factual. This isn't actually new, and there's a reason that the white house and senate have been packing the courts with justices from the Federalist Society. The ideological disagreement between federalists and democrats is as old as the country. The "weird" thing is that the country has been quite focused on installing democracies elsewhere, but that rather makes sense because we maintain influence over those countries and often "observe" their elections.

> ...have been packing the courts

What exactly do you mean when you use this phrase?

You'll find my answer at the end of the sentence that you truncated. If you consider that to be bait, please do your part to keep HN civil, and don't pick it up.

I in no way intended it to be bait. I was merely seeking clarification because for about 100 years, up until roughly 2 weeks ago, that phrase had a pretty well-established meaning. One that is different from the way you used it.

> up until roughly 2 weeks ago, that phrase had a pretty well-established meaning

Therein lies the fun of languages: meanings shift, and sometimes rapidly. From my perspective, “packing the courts” now has dual meaning - and in this sense, I read the OP’s comment as “filling the courts with”.

What a shame to "pack the courts" (as you say) with people who believe in the Constitution as their guiding light.

> What a shame to "pack the courts" (as you say) with people who believe in the Constitution as their guiding light.

That's a rather tendentious take. I'm pretty sure everyone who gets appointed to the Supreme Court "believe[s] in the Constitution as their guiding light" but have rather different ideas about what that actually means.

> Senator Mike Lee wasn't just being honest, his statement that the US is not a democracy is factual. This isn't actually new, and there's a reason that the white house and senate have been packing the courts with justices from the Federalist Society. The ideological disagreement between federalists and democrats is as old as the country. The "weird" thing is that the country has been quite focused on installing democracies elsewhere, but that rather makes sense because we maintain influence over those countries and often "observe" their elections.

Just a nitpick, but the federalists of early American history have little to do with the Federalist Society. I'd say the modern-day Democrats are probably closer to the Federalists and the Republicans are closer to the Democratic-Republicans.

Excellent nitpick; history is full of fun surprises if you only look at the names folks use.

You know about it though. Bringing a problem into light is the first step to fixing it and thanks to our remarkably robust press, we’ve fairly well catalogued our issues. Now, our government moves glacially by design to avoid overcorrection but it’s reasonable to assume that these issues will get fixed in time.

The issue not being talked about is solving the first-past-the-post system but I don’t think that that’s unique to the US.

The only thing that's new here are the last two points. We've got a president from an unpopular minority party that increasingly relies on various tactics rather than actually appealing to voters.

The decentralized nature of our elections means that the elections have always been a patchwork of potentially problematic local jurisdictions, each one so small that it's unlikely for issues to shift the outcome of a national election.

Perhaps our greatest strength was our TRUST in the people involved to do the right thing, and that trust has been abused. And a not-insignificant number of people have decided to go along with it for their own advantage, whatever that may be.

The US is not a beacon of democracy at this point, it's a beacon of minority rule. Between the electoral college and each state (no matter how many people live in that state) having 2 senators it's an archaic system that's way overdue for an update. However, the system is built in such a way as to make updates very, very difficult so, unfortunately, don't expect any significant changes anytime soon.

In the meantime, one party has managed to exploit the weaknesses of our system to override the will of the majority on many issues (healthcare, climate change, racial justice, gun control... etc.)

You’re correct. It’s a Republic with a sane voting system that keeps the mobs from the population centers from ruling the country. You say weakness I say strength.

And so instead of the "mobs from the population centers" ruling the country we have the "mobs" from a few swing states running the country. How is that better? When it comes to the Senate why should dirt in one state get so much more say than people in another?

I see the House as a faster-changing, populous body (which is generally a good thing) and the Senate as a much slower-changing balance against the worst of what a fast-changing, populous body could wreak on the country.

Ok, so why not a bicameral system where the Senate also has proportional representation while keeping 6 year terms? There wouldn't have to be a 1:1 ratio of senators to representatives. Maybe there would be something like 1 senator/2 representatives?

Or, if we kept the same 2 senators/state maybe we split high population states into smaller states so that we don't have huge gap between number or residents/senator?

Personally, I think we should probably move in the unicameral direction. I don't think that "fast-changing" adaptability is a negative in this modern world.

Unicameral systems seem to prevent beneficial compromises. I’d personally hate to see the country gyrate between policy extremes as the composition of that singular body changed.

Even when going extremely “my way”, as an engineer I’d hate it.

I find a lot of people spend time thinking “how much more progress could we make if we didn’t have to compromise with those assholes?”

Far fewer think “how much more damage could those assholes do if they didn’t have to compromise with us?”

Why must the will of these population centers be exercised at the highest level of our government in the first place? Surely they could just implement their policies at the state level, unless, that is, the goal is not to make effective policy but to instead vindictively assert their will over their ideological rivals.

Uh... because they've got most of the population? Is this a trick question? Wasn't the whole idea that majority rules?

If you're not going with majority rules, then what's the basis for picking this particular minority to vindictively assert their will over their ideological rivals?

You seem stuck in this binary where you believe that if you are not ruling over some else they must be ruling over you.

You're the one making the claim that the majority is going to rule vindictively. If you believe that they're worse at that than other people, it's on you to demonstrate it. Or to demonstrate that the minority singled out by the Electoral College is somehow especially better at it.

Lets put it this way: of all the policies that the OP sounded off on, which ones, if any, have had legislation pass through the senate addressing them? None?

Spare me the talk of 'tyranny of the minority' in the senate. It's really telling as to the maturity level of those involved when the basis for calling out 'tyranny' is that those in the legislature simply say "no" to your whims, especially when those seeking change are more than capable of implementing those changes more locally but choose not to.

I didn't mention any whims and I didn't say anything about "tyranny", so since you're apparently only interested in inventing a strawman and then calling it names, I'll let you have at it.

Bias? It’s called the electoral college. It’s part of that unpopular document called the United States Constitution.

Yes, I'm precisely calling the electoral college a bias, and asking the OP to demonstrate why that bias would be better than a more equitable decision making mechanism.

I think this is a pretty fair writeup that I agree with: https://www.engelska.uu.se/digitalAssets/299/c_299583-l_1-k_...

> It’s part of that unpopular document called the United States Constitution.

Which allowed slavery, counted those slaves as 3/5ths of a person for purposes of apportionment in Congress while not allowing those slaves to vote. The electoral college was part of the compromise with the slave states. Also didn't allow women to vote.

I agree with that to the extent that the States stick with the Constitution ie my right to bear arms is not infringed when I travel or a particular state or a state’s decision does not cause my taxes to raise in a different state where I live ie California trying to change vehicle emission laws.

May not be a perfect system but there is not a perfect way to represent such a wide and diverse area and population. I think our founders did quite well.

Maybe they did well by the standards of their era, but a lot has changed since then.

If the concern is urbanites making decisions for rural people, then it's fair to point out that there are plenty more rural people in California than the total population of many other states. The state boundaries are completely arbitrary, yet they affect so much.

I have no idea why you're getting downvoted for this. The Senate system is really silly at this point.

Republicans control the senate despite only having 40% of the popular vote nationally in the Senate races.

Californians pay 13% of the Federal tax revenue and get the same number of Senators as states that contribute less than 1%.

> Republicans control the senate despite only having 40% of the popular vote nationally in the Senate races.

That's because the Senate is there to represent the states themselves in the federal government as individual political entities.

IMHO, if you want pure majority rule everywhere, you might as well just abolish the Senate entirely, as it would be redundant with the House.

Personally, I think some kind of geography-proportionate representation is necessary to prevent the non-urban areas from becoming neglected hinterlands. That said, I do dislike the way the Republicans have used this system to extract maximum partisan advantage, so some reform is necessary. Rather than making the Senate representation proportional by population, I think it should lose its monopoly on executive/judicial confirmations and the House should have equal say in those.

> The rest of the world used to see the US as a beacon of democracy.

this has never been the case except in the minds of Americans

parts of the the US had legalised segregation until the 60s, it still has systematic legalised gerrymandering, and the voter suppression problem has never been dealt with to an extent where it could be considered to be a "beacon of democracy"

One of the two major parties has economic policies that are so wildly unpopular (see e.g. https://www.vox.com/21502189/preexisting-conditions-trump-re... ) that they've resigned themselves to using gerrymandering, bigotry, voter suppression and inherent weaknesses in the US democratic system (votes in rural areas count more when electing presidents and senators) to rule using votes from an angry minority instead of a majority. It doesn't seem sustainable.

"Wildly unpopular" ~= 49% of the voters approve [edit for clarity: of the party].

There's truly deeper systemic issues in the United States than the Republican's economic policies.

Your figures are hilariously off, there. If you look at Republican social policies, they're even more off.

The Republican platform is remarkably narrow and well defined. They are the party of 'free speech,' God, guns and eliminating abortions. The rest is ancillary to their voters. When you cast your opponents as God-hating, Christmas-fighting, Gun-stealing, baby-killing potheads, people don't really care about your economic policies, they're just voting to stop the anti-Christ.

The Democratic tent on the other hand is stretched about as broad as it possibly can be, and they don't really commit to anything. If they cast themselves as too progressive they risk alienating their right flank and the 'centrist undecideds' (I mean my lord who can't make up their mind about this). If they cast themselves as too conservative, they risk alienating the Bernie bros (who IMO swung the election for Trump last time).

So, they stand as a big blob. They espouse a kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge progressivism: no clear support socialized medicine, a refusal to answer questions about court packing, and immigration doesn't even come up. Maybe more DACA? Where we just throw the problem under a rug again, instead of actually addressing it.

I personally wish the Democrats were half as progressive as Republicans are trying to make them out to be, but they're not. Not even close. Half of what the Republicans accuse them of I'm like damn, that's solid center to center-left policy, I wish the Dems were on board with that!

As of this year Republicans officially have no enumerated platform.

Oh you haven't been watching nearly enough FOX if you think that :) Take that from someone who now has a Tucker Carlson shaped brain aneurism.

I believe what parent comment means is that the RNC has no national platform that they have adopted, advertised and articulated for their National Convention delegates to deliberate and vote on leading up to the election.

Which is a correct and true statement, the RNC hasn’t published a party platform as they have in years prior.

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/24/21399396/republican-convention...

Ahh, I misunderstood, thanks for the clarification!

> "Wildly unpopular" ~= 49% of the voters approve.

Citation? While it's possible there's ~49% support of the party, that doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent amount of support for the economic policy.

Policy proposals such as "the rich should be taxed more" routinely get approval from ~65% of voters. Thankfully for that party, they've found a way to get people to vote based on fear, racism, abortion, guns and other divisive issues instead of economic policy.

_That_ party? Those are wedge issues specifically because they apply to both parties.

> fear

"LGBTQ lives are at risk" vs. "rioters are burning down our cities"

> racism

"systemic racism is a problem" vs "critical race theory is a problem"

> abortion, guns

self explanatory.

> 49% of the voters approve.

I wouldn't assume that 100% of voters even know the economic policies of the people they're voting for, let alone approve of them. It seems like people mostly vote because they've been told the party they're voting against is evil[1], not because they actually support the policies.

[1] Of course those of us who think they're both evil are not left with much motivation to vote for either, which partly explains (along with voter suppression, gerrymandering making voting less effective, etc) why half the country doesn't bother to vote at all.

What % of the 49% are single issue voters? I think their economic policies are the last reason why voters support Republicans.

As the reply says, these things have always been there. I, in India, have never seen US as a beacon of Democracy, or for that mattet, any country, even India. We heard these when Bush got elected, when Clinton, Obama, & Trump, although not on thse levels. This is the democracy, when a party or side does bad things to damage it, or get advantage, others voice concern & speak & shout. US is more seen as world police in middle clase india.

This is all very exaggerated due to the fact that access to voting has become a political issue.

Voting in the US is incredibly efficient and easy for the majority of people. In this case we are talking about registration not actually voting. You only need to register once when you move to a new area so most people don’t even need to register.

On top of that voter registration is available year round. This is just the last day to register and still be able to vote in the upcoming election. Again you don’t need to register for every election.

Also, numerous states also allow people to register and vote the same day.

It’s not perfect but what you read online is grossly exaggerated for political gain on both sides.

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