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Comment by adamsea | Hacker News Reader

> The harder part is gaming our media. If attackers can help direct where voters vote with $$$, that's a cheap attack too.

Let’s be real that’s basically a part of politics. That’s not an issue with elections per se.

Plus it’s clearly easier to just use social media and targeted propaganda to manipulate voters.

I’m all for secure elections and improving that security.

But my understanding is that to date when people have taken a serious look they’ve found no meaningful evidence of fraud.

The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college then the presidency wouldn’t come down to a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few states.

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> The real deal is if we got rid of the electoral college

I reckon the US system needs to self-reform if it wants to survive. All democracies change their electoral laws from time to time. The current system appears unsustainable: roughly two thirds of the electorate now feel fundamentally disenfranchised (one third thinks it's racist; the other that it's corrupt).

... and it's both racist and corrupt. I agree we need reform if we're to survive. Between BLM this spring, DC now, the fringe militant elements, we're seeing more and more violence.

I will mention that the split-down-the-middle thing isn't a property of electoral college. That's how you win in a democracy. If voters are distributed between 1 and 10 on some issue:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

I win by picking 5.5. Whatever you pick, you get a minority of voters. That's complicated by primaries. In the same system, if I want to be a ballot candidate, though, I can't do that. I want to pick 2.75 or 7.25 so the majority of my party votes for me.

Of course, things like charisma fit in a bit too, but for the most part, if one party runs a 2.74 candidate and the other a 7.24, the 7.24 has an advantage, and vice-versa for 2.76 and 7.76.

All that things like electoral college do is shift weights. Tight elections just means politicians have learned to play the game well.

A system where someone with 40% or 60% of the vote wins isn't fundamentally broken -- the underlying check-and-balance works. What is fundamentally broken are when incentive structures misalign.

Gaming of the media is a title/position. Probably the easiest part of an attack-

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