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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

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.

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