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Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

Why should people who spread out over a large area get to decide how most people are governed?

A republic can be democratic, autocratic, or made of an oligarchy. Only one of those is predicated on a majority of the participants choosing their representatives, and is far more stable than the other two where the minority must use coercion and force to successfully exact its will on the majority. How do you propose a nation has representative leaders who aren't appointed by most of the participants? From what principle do they derive their authority?

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It's called the "United States" for a reason. The country was designed to be a union of semi-autonomous states, not a single entity. The president is still elected democratically, but the state's votes are what matter, not individuals. If we went by the popular vote, it would be a minority of states imposing their will on the majority of the remaining states. You could argue that that's preferable, but acting like Republicans are using "this one weird trick" to get electoral votes is ignoring why the country was set up the way it is.

I've never found this to be a convincing argument in favor of the electoral college as implemented. Why favor a system which constantly cedes power to the same small arbitrary electorate (swing states), year after year?

States should allocate electors in proportion to their own popular votes. The +2 electors for each state is already a good mechanism for combatting pure majority rule. At this point, swing state influence is arguably worse for this country than majority rule.

http://archive.fairvote.org/e_college/reform.htm#proportiona...

I have been thinking about the same argument recently as well and the most compelling argument I can come up with to justify it is that the states give up some of their power in the federal scheme in return for a degree of sovereignty. That conception of it works out pretty well if the federal government is limited and deals with concerns that all states share (like defense) and leaves most of the decisions that impact people's everyday lives to the states. IE, the degree to which the federal government impacts a person's life in California is far less than California's impact on that person's life. But interpretations of the interstate commerce clause really drive up the federal governments power to where that tradeoff in power might not be worth it. It is interesting, really, to consider this system where we have sort of two, dual sovereign entities governing us that are sort of kind of related but not directly so.

> a minority of states imposing their will on the majority of the remaining states

These are arbitrary ways of cutting up the vote. Right now we have a minority of people imposing their will on the majority of the remaining people. I don't have any allegiance to one state or another. I'm an American and go where my job needs me. Why do I deserve less representation in government just because I need to live in a city for a profession instead of living back with parents in the middle of nowhere?

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