Hacker News Reader

Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Which states matter in deciding the president? How many of those are there? Where are they? Genuine questions, i don't follow it closely at all beyond the news media chatter about the path to the Whitehouse and so on.

Agree the NYT is getting worse, more establishment Democrat driven now their supporters are who pays them. There is still enough institutional memory that through the naritive hit pieces there's frequently solid reporting of contradictory facts that totally undermine it in the same story.

View on HN

It’s not so much which states matter. Larger states generally matter more in Presidential elections. Especially large purple states like PA.

The problem with Presidential elections is small rural states still have outsize influence via the combination of more EC votes than a population-based count AND winner-take-all elections (51% of the vote in. A state and you get 100% of that states electors) in most states.

Turn there’s the Senate. Because it’s not based on population, CA and TX have the same influence as SD and DE. Combine that with arcane super-majority rules and a defective filibuster and it’s a recipe for outright obstruction by the minority party.

I’ve seen good arguments that the Senate violates equal protection under the Constitution and should be reformed on that basis. Keep the Senate around with its 6 year and 2/2/2 staggered terms but give Texas and California more Senators than North and South Dakota.

Violates the constitution? I’m not a constitutional scholar, but that sounds like a ridiculous argument. Article 1, section 3: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State…”

The 14th amendment introduces “equal protection,” speaks specifically about representation, and says nothing about changing the makeup of the senate.

(Edit: And even if it did, the 17th amendment restates that each state gets two senators, and would supersede the 14th.)

I am Dutch / European and do not understand why change/amendments of the constitution is not generally acceptable/attractive by the US population.

Surely societal change must and does change the efficacy and context of law over time?

They are acceptable (we have 27), the problem is the high bar to enacting one. With our hyper-partisan two-party system, it’s really hard to get anything done. Even basic legislation like the annual budget frequently stalls and we shut down the federal government while Congress pulls its proverbial head out of its arse.

They are. But the super-majority at multiple levels required to do so make them a non-starter for the petty "give my team an edge" and "force the states that aren't on my team to act like the ones that are" stuff everyone wants to use them for.

swing states, Pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, nevada, arizona, are some. Florida used to be one but they've gone full on red (boomer population % has increased drastically over the past 20 years). I hope there is a schism in the republican party soon over Roe and other privacy rights that are under attack by the Magas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com