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Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

“Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” – James Madison, Federalist 10, 1787

This bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate.

Why would lower-population states reduce their own representation power?

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Funny how people always bring up this quote and not the one from Federalist 58 where Madison warns against requiring supermajorities for general legislative work which many defenders of the EC also support (i.e., the filibuster rule).

"It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences."

Probably because it doesn't stand on it's own and it's not nearly as impactful.

I'm still not even sure what it's saying without further context, even with your explanation.

Vermont has signed on to this bill in part because it's more democratic and fair then what we have today. I think it's a little bit altruistic of them but honestly - why do folks need to be bought to do something that widens the net of justice?

> Why would lower-population states reduce their own representation power?

That is why the supporters of this amendment (and similar approaches like the NPVIC) should be prepared to settle for a compromise which preserves the disproportionate power of the lower-population states.

In fact, such a compromise was proposed in 1950, with the bipartisan Lodge-Gossett Amendment[0]. The idea behind it was that the electors in each state would have to vote proportionally to the popular vote within that state while not changing the number of electors granted to each state.

Because of the small number of electors in some states, rounding issues can be quite significant in some situations, and I believe the proposal required fractional electoral voters, representing a tenth of a percent of the state popular vote.

[0] https://www.fairvote.org/past_attempts_at_reform

In 1979 it got close without compromise.

I'm quite against compromise here. The productive parts of the country need to unlearn helplessness and get tough of we can't get a real democracy.

DC Statehood can help with the senate votes despite being a small state too.

I agree that it's possible to compromise too much, but it's not 1979 any more, and I don't think you should be encouraging any side to "get tough" and unilaterally rewrite the Constitution. Also, you're going to need to add a lot more new states than just DC to get a two-thirds majority in the senate.

I don't have much attachment to the union. If a bunch of states want to secede or, more realistically, set up alternative currencies so they can have some monetary and fiscal sovereignty, that's fine with me.

The ironic thing is the places who keep talking about seceding being the answer are the places that can’t make it on their own: the rural areas that are dependent on federal funding to survive! Look up the State Of Jefferson for a laugh.

I say for fun let’s let rural America secede into its own country and see which country “cries uncle” first. I know who I bet on.

> The productive parts of the country need to unlearn helplessness

  Thats so reductive. the "productive" parts of the country are completely dependent on the "unproductive" ones for anything that isnt software or finance.

It's reductive but true. Large parts of the country are tax burdens when we look at the big numbers. For example, California and Oregon make a profit for the USA, while Mississippi and Alabama are more expensive to operate than they return in tax revenue.

This pattern also emerges on a county-by-county level within states. For example, Oregon and Washington are bisected by the Cascades, and the eastern counties are much poorer than the western counties and depend on the profits made in the west.

This uneven burden is an important ingredient in explaining why it's not just rural folks resenting city folks, but also city folks resenting rural folks. It is not fun to know that one's tax dollars are disproportionately funding welfare for folks who politically desire to see one's way of life burnt down because it's immoral or wasteful or simply not as sexist and racist as in the past.

The unproductive parts of the country (let’s not use euphemisms: call them Red States) are in general net recipients of funding from the federal government and the Blue States are net providers. The hated “coastal elites” are literally propping up flyover country. Who is dependent on who?

Yes, but as a counterpoint that was due to offshoring of the domestic manufacturing base which was due to the setup of the international monetary system in 1971/1974 as well as a whole slew of policy decisions which made labor-intensive manufacturing businesses less profitable as a whole in the U.S. because of the necessity of running fiscal deficits and a strong dollar; so the red states were basically sacrificed in the grand scheme of things, not by their own volition.

You're talking about a few states up near the great lakes. And for the record, I'm not sure I'm counting those as the unproductive parts.

There are plenty of other red states which were never industrial. Your Wyomings and, Missisippis, etc.

"Why would lower-population states reduce their own representation power?" To do the right thing, that is why. Not doing it implies that they know that have an over-representation and would only be against it to maintain that over-representation for their own selfish goals.

In no way would this law make the US a pure democracy, where citizens can vote directly on whether or not to pass laws. The US would still be a representative democracy, a republic, where citizens vote for representatives, who then pass laws without input from citizens.

This isn't a proposal for pure democracy. Depending on how you define it, that would require proportional allocation of the senate, or its abolition, as well.

Our not-so-pure democracy, based on the constitution Madison signed, has lately been quite the spectacle and proved incompatible with basic rights and security. It hasn't lasted very long, and arguably fell apart in 1860. Our president elect has been alive for a third of its lifespan, counting the long way from 1788. Which is another way of saying our president elect is pretty old, and our government pretty young.

There are founders aplenty to quote on the necessity of amendment, as well. But without further research, I'd guess trouble in the Senate, too.

> Pure democracies

The US is a representative democracy, not pure/direct; Madison explicitly quoted:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#United_States

Is Madison even correct about this? Is the U.S. less turbulent than other countries where the power of each vote is more equal? It doesn't seem so to me from where I sit, but maybe I'm missing something?

I don’t think you’re missing anything. It’s perhaps folly to quantify “democracy”, but looking past that folly, the US doesn’t rank all that highly.

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

Mind you, it’s weird to see all those nominal constitutional monarchies rank so highly. But, at least in Canada, which I am most familiar with, all that monarchy stuff is dusty window dressing. The actual house is full of sensibly apportioned voting districts.

Given that the Queen had zero say (not even any publicly-expressed opinion, let alone any consultation from the rest of the government, let alone any actual involvement) in Brexit, which will have repercussions on the state she "rules" for centuries, it seems fair to say that Commonwealth-style constitutional monarchies are just as democratic as they would be without a democracy.

And by all accounts Empress Masako is deeply unhappy in her position and would be better off as a commoner.

As I read it, the discussion was not about the electoral college, but about representative democracy versus direct democracy.

It was written in a time, when there was the negative example of parts of the French revolution, where there was essentially mob rule, and people have been executed left and right, because the public could be sufficiently incited.

The amount of empirical data about pure democracies that James Madison had in 1787 is minuscule compared to the amount of empirical data anyone with a free half hour and a connection to Wikipedia has today.

(Madison was also a slaveowner and an advocate of expanding slavery into new territories. Now, yes, he was apparently considerate to his slaves compared to the average slaveowners, and I suppose you could make the "by the standards of his time" argument, but - the standards of his time were that you could literally own slaves and still be a considerate person and a respected authority on fair republican government.)

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