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Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

> How does that work once the idiots are in charge of the budget?

Society collapses and we become a failed state - but states fail all the time, universal suffrage appears to minimize the number of states that need to fail.

> Well it does. The confusion is about what you’re voting for.

When it comes to voting for president, my vote as a Vermonter is objectively worth 2.63 times as much as my friend from Washington - additionally the FPTP voting approach and winner take-all electoral college causes a lot of other oddities that make my VT vote essentially worthless when compared with a resident of PA.

There are a few ways we break 1 person 1 vote equivalence and while we can argue whether that's a good or bad thing you can't argue against it being the case.

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> Society collapses and we become a failed state - but states fail all the time, universal suffrage appears to minimize the number of states that need to fail.

Curious claim. Has there been any research that shows states are less likely to fail with universal suffrage?

> When it comes to voting for president, my vote as a Vermonter is objectively worth 2.63 times as much as my friend from Washington

See, that’s the confusion. You’re not voting for president directly. You’re voting for who you want your electoral college to vote for. In most states if you’re on the losing side of the vote in your state, your presidential vote literally means nothing.

Your individual vote in Vermont is not “worth more” than your friend’s vote in Washington because your both just voting in state level decisions about who the college should vote for.

The legitimate claim is about the number of delegates and (arguably much more important) the number of house representatives each state is getting.

Reiterated, there isn’t a lack of 1 person 1 vote equivalence in any elections I know of in the US (e.g. landowners don’t get extra votes). There are just elections people think are direct democracy when they are far from it.

Regarding research - hrm, not seeing super much out there but societies have evolved (or devolved if you care) into democracies pretty reliably and democratization seems to be a general government trend.

I don't disagree on the point of voting - it's not technically a direct election of the president. But we're still voting to impact the presidential election and my vote counts more toward that decision than my friend in WA.

I don't follow how states evolving/devolving into democracies being a general trend supports the initial claim that universal suffrage minimizes the number of failed states?

> Society collapses and we become a failed state - but states fail all the time, universal suffrage appears to minimize the number of states that need to fail.

The only society's that i can think of that lasted a long time were society's that didn't have universal suffrage. The idea of a republic is pretty stupid to be honest. What you end up with is a bunch of people with completely different agendas to ensure that every issue gets hotly debated and when a decision is 'made', barely enforced or executed on. Additionally, it seems to give rise to massive paternalism and loss of freedom which is suppose to be the opposite of what it was meant to do.

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