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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The electoral college has very seldom deviated from the popular vote. It's happened a handful of times, but not frequently.

My point is that people who clamor "popular vote" don't always take into consideration what would happen if we implemented popular democracy.

Interestingly, Japan is another country that gives the countryside political advantage and tax advantage.

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"Very seldom" including every single Republican Presidential term for the past 30 years save one. Without the electoral college propping them up the modern Republican party would be in serious trouble.

> "Very seldom" including every single Republican Presidential term for the past 30 years save one.

So, twice?

Yes just two of the last six elections. This determined 7 of the 9 sitting members of the court.

The two times that a president has lost the popular vote and won the election in recent history were Bush Jr's first term in 2000 and Trump's term in 2016.

Only 3 justices were appointed during those terms, all by Trump in 2017 - 2020.

Bush Jr did appoint two justices but they were during his second term, when he won the popular vote.

The remaining four justices were appointed by Bush Sr, Clinton, and Obama (2).

So I have no idea where you are getting your figure of 7/9 from.

So what you are saying is 7/9 justices came from the six elections in this century? Sounds an awful lot like what I said but I guess redundancy is sometimes useful.

It's happened 2/6 times this century. That doesn't strike me as very seldom.

Historically it is very seldom. We obviously will need more time to see if this 2/6 is a pattern or an aberration.

This was just limiting it to this century, though. The pattern is well established and well understood. It isn't even very complicated. Each state has 2 senators and at least one representative. The number of electoral votes of a state is the number of senators plus the number of representatives. So a state like mine, Vermont, has three electoral votes even though we have only about 500,000 citizens. If population size were uncorrelated with political leanings, this would just contribute noise to the electoral process, but it doesn't. Less densely populated regions are conservative. The more such regions there are in a state, the lower the population of the state. So in effect conservative voices are given extra weight in elections. If you believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created equal" and whatnot --, this should offend you.

and Japan's government is equally dysfunctional and influenced by minority fringe groups and religious zealots.

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