Hacker News Reader

Comment by shapefrog | Hacker News Reader

> I’m assuming the reference was to Roe v. Wade, but would like to hear more.

Republicans ran in elections on "stack the supreme court with people who will enact our values".

Republicans ran in elections on "our values are ban abortions".

Republicans win election.

Republicans winning an election, stacking the court with their people, having them do exactly what they promised to do and enacting their campaign promises is democracy in action, not the suspension of democracy.

If you dont want it, everyone needs to vote for what they do want.

View on HN

The republicans who have barely won the presidential popular vote in decades? How is that a free and fair election? Similarly, the senate that confirms the Supreme Court justices — how is it free and fair that Wyoming with 500K people gets two senators, same as every other state? Except DC gets no Congress people in the house or senate. Nor does Puerto Rico get proper representation.

Because that’s how the Constitution was written, so that the minority has a voice and Wyoming citizens matter just as much as coastal elites. Very fair

Being in a document from 250 years ago doesn’t mean anything except it’s in a document that old. Certainly doesn’t make whatever it says about elections free and fair. That defies logic.

Explain how the popular vote not mattering for president is free and fair?

Why are you choosing only one minority to care about? State citizens of Wyoming? Why not any other minority? Why not minority religions, colors of skin, political views, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, mental health conditions? What makes not caring about these minorities fair?

Why is Wyoming even a state? Have you read up on the politics of how we got to 50 states? Especially the civil war and post civil war time period? How is that fair?

How is DC not having a voice fair? How is Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other territories not having any sort of proper voice fair?

Not sure why fairness is the ultimate arbiter. There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population. Fair systems that predictably spin apart are useless.

That’s what the discussion was about. Otherwise why is any talking here happening?

> There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population.

You and others can’t keep saying this stuff as if it’s true by default just because we are brainwashed into this as kids in school and in every day life. Again I ask. Why is that a worry for minority populations but not any of the variety of other minority populations I listed before?

If you do feel that populations like lgbtq, different minority skin colors, different mental health conditions, disabilities, also shouldn’t feel dosenfranchised, then how come that’s exactly what’s happening with some of these populations with the current system of giving a ton of power to rural low population conservatives? Like lgbtq, some minorites, etc. It’s contradictory logic.

I wonder what exactly would happen if the feelings of these rural people are felt to be disenfranchised. What are the obvious reasons you assert? Why are those reasons better than myself and many others feeling disenfranchised with the current senate and electoral college system who aren’t in rural places?

To clarify the matter of the recent (post-Reagan/George H. W. Bush) US popular vote for President, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in each Presidential election starting in 1992 except for 2004 (George W. Bush re-election vs. John Kerry). During that period, Republicans won the Electoral vote and thus the presidency in 2000 (George W. Bush initial election vs. Al Gore) and 2016 (Donald Trump election vs. Hillary Clinton).

Put another way:

The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and Electoral College in:

1992 1996 2008 2012 2020

The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and the Republican candidate won the Electoral College in:

2000 2016

The Republican candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College in:

2004

Excellent comment, I’ll be saving this if you don’t mind… really lays out just how a large fraction of the country has some very legitimate grievances about the fairness of our elections.

> fairness of our elections.

That isnt about fairness of the elections, that is fairness of the system of representational democracy implemented.

Which isn’t fair.

You do realize, right, that if the rules were different, the people would vote differently?

E.g. if popular vote was what mattered, more Republicans in California would bother voting.

So you can’t really claim “Democrats would win the popular vote elections”

Then you would support an effort to get rid of the EC and increase democracy?

Increasing democracy definitely isn't my goal; it's increasing freedom. Remember, Hitler was democratically elected. To preserve freedom, democracy requires many different safeguards (e.g. constitutionally guaranteed rights, "majority cannot oppress minority", etc.).

That said, I'm not opposed to eliminating EC. I think both EC and popular vote have their pluses and minuses. But then, I'm not an American, so...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/16/republican-c...

Democracy for me, not for thee.

Many Democrats think that the 2016 election result was rigged.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2018/09/11/many-democrats-...

Democracy for me, not for thee.

In their study of voter confidence in national elections 2000 through 2012, Michael Sances and Charles Stewart found that while most supporters of both the winner and loser of an election are very confident in that their own vote was counted correctly, the confidence of those on the losing side slightly decreases. Moreover, the confidence of those on the winning side increases significantly from its pre-election level.

> Many Democrats think that the 2016 election result was rigged.

Touché, the "Russians forced deplorables to vote for Trump" is another mass delusion.

Pretty much the only good thing you can say about Hillary is that she didn't lead a mass of cannon fodder democrats, and a select group of conspirators to assassinate her own VP.

Yeah, the delusion is silly. Not that the delusions of the other side are any better, but the Russians trope still happening is very smh.

Hate to break it to you but Trump lost the popular vote and there are several states and many counties that will always go republican despite them losing the popular vote.

Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?

Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties. Of the remaining places, a voter can choose between either of only two parties. If neither represent them, then they have no one to vote for. This situation is not “free” in the true sense of the word. You do not have a free vote, and in most places your vote is meaningless.

Worse still is the fact that one of your political parties openly attempted to overthrow the result of the election in order to stay in power, and the other party has not brought the full force of the law to bare for fear of speaking civil unrest.

It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in, nor of its inherent weakness due to the rather antiquated voting system it uses.

Stacking a court goes against the separation of power that the three estates were supposed to uphold. No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom.

America is sailing very close to the wind and Americans should not be complacent about the risks they face

Not related to GP, but just something that's common on thread like this in general. There seems to be an attitude that the modern world has ushered some eternal era and that since everything is better in the modern world nothing can ever get worse again and the empire will never decline. Not surprised, given the sites association with VCs and startups that operate on the delusion of infinite growth.

Yes. Similar to what people like Bill Gates and Jordan Peterson keep repeating while wanting to generally maintain core status quo traits. Stephen Pinker championing this and being buddies with the first two is also of note.

Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on. As if the way we have our current rights was gotten by calming down.

> Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on.

Sure, that's fair, I'll even agree that the tone of many of these pieces is hyperbolic. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that things can't go bad, because that's a sure fire way to ensure they eventually do go bad.

Well I’m disagreeing with that statement haha. So I think it’s only fair cuz it sounds fair and calm. But it’s said by people who want to preserve their own high status in society and don’t care about serious progress being made any more.

As if America doesn’t have so many people paycheck to paycheck, in poverty, etc. and that’s just America

> Hate to break it to you but Trump lost the popular vote

You are aware that the competition is for the most electoral college seats. I am fairly certain that the Democrats were aware of this for the election as well. Yet armed with this knowledege they still lost to the worst run campaign in a century fronted by an actual clown.

> Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?

I mean, the people elected to office litterally promised to gerrymander. If the people elect someone who brings in proportional representation will you have a problem with that?

> Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties.

Hang on, those "safe" districts are "safe" because an overwhelming majority of people vote for the party that wins... That is democracy! Are you arguing for or against democracy?

> No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom

Litteral campaign promise, and people voted for it in numbers, it is the will of the people.

> It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in

The problem is democracy itself. People are voting for shitty hacky demi-gods selling them a used car that runs on snake oil.

Every side of every agenda has become infected with this horrible disease, but what is happening is the logical conclusion of what happens when you combine democracy with an erosion of education. It didnt start this year or with trump etc. It has been happening for decades.

The population is now so poorly equiped to navigate the most basic of tasks that a foreign power can swing an election by spending $100,000 on some facebook ads.

You missed the point of this entire thread. The whole point is fairness and freedom. Not about the basic obvious truth that Trump won the electoral college. That’s a pointless factoid that everyone is already agreeing with. The rest of the comment appears to be along similar lines of logic.

> free and fair elections, are being turned down this year

What changed this year? The most commone argument for the election not being free and fair here is "electoral college vs popular vote". Some have even backed up the very point by showing that this situation has been persistent for the last 20 years, so ... what changed this year? Did they add electoral college votes to red states or something?

Free and fair elections - personally I think of elections not being free and fair someone standing next to you as you vote saying vote for vlad or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin. As far as I am aware none of that is happening.

Its pretty bad faith to say Republicans claiming electoral fraud is the Big Lie but when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence and vice versa. Simultaneously holding the belief that the elctions are Not Free and Fair while claiming that they are indeed Free and Fair depending upon which party is claiming it is rank hypocracy at best.

Why does it matter if something changed? If they weren’t free and fair in previous years, that can still make them not free and fair this year.

> …not being free and fair…vote for vlad…or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin…

You gave an extremely specific coercive tactic and basic corruption. How does it follow if neither happening, then, what, things are fine?

This is reminiscent of the neoliberal moderate to conservative status-quo-seeking intellectual and incredibly lazy common talking point. A point echoed by Bill Maher to Jordan Peterson to Bill Gates. “Things aren’t so bad. So be okay with that.” The classic Stephen Pinker elitist “optimism”. So a point made since forever.

> Its pretty bad faith…when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence…

If Dems say they are ‘Free and Fair’ with anything, they are liars, as usual. I am going much farther than you in my denigration of the Dems. What’s the point of this paragraph being written to me?

I think what's worth thinking about is whether you DO actually have enough democracy. Are first-past-the-post voting systems able to accurately represent the diverse views of a nation like America? I'd argue that they do not and that the problems you have outlined could be solved with MORE democracy rather than less.

If one goes back and listens to Trump speeches from the 2016 race he actually sounded a lot like a bonkers version of Bernie Sanders in terms of the way he tried to appeal to the economic distress of many potential voters. If there was a more representative voting system – such as that in Germany – you might end up with policies that Americans actually want by having multiple parties that can represent all Americans.

A politician is only as good as your ability to fire them. You can't fire yours very easily.

And if you think democracy is the problem, why not take a look at the difference between two oil-rich nations, Norway and Libya, or two neighbours, North and South Korea.

since we’re on hn i’ll assume your comment was in good faith and not a bad faith attempt to paint entire segments of our citizens and their legitimate concerns as if they are somehow unreasonable.

your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system and ignores the many non-hyperbolic, very real and very rational concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.

> to paint entire segments of our citizens and their legitimate concerns as if they are somehow unreasonable.

the dems want to murder babies

Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable? It is a concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.

> your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system

Actually the system is functioning shockingly well in the face of a rabid population hooked on fox/cnn talking heads then voting in bad actors promising to be bad actors.

For some absolutely baffling reason the will of the people at this point in time is to elect batshit crazy representitives of all stripes. The best spent dollar of the billion or so spent on a presidential election cycle would be to try and figure out why that is and what you can do to get people to vote in their self interest and not against.

> the dems want to murder babies

> Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable?

obviously that is hyperbolic, irrational, and unreasonable.

assuming that you’re referring to abortion—those are not babies and it is absurdly hyperbolic to imply that an entire segment (81,268,924 people voted Dem in 2020) that more than 81 Million people want to murder babies. Obviously you can see how ridiculously hyperbolic and irrational your statement is.

as for the rest of your comment, it would appear like you agree that we have anything but a perfectly functioning system, even if you chose to ignore the larger obvious systemic problems which have been repeatedly and reasonably addressed by countless rational citizens.

so, with that said, even tho it’s clear that you are not engaging at all in good faith, and it would seem you are indeed attempting to paint entire massive segments of our citizens and their absolutely legitimate concerns as if they are all somehow unreasonable—your gp post still assumes a perfectly functioning system, and i believe a very convincing and strong argument can (and has repeatedly) been made that this is not currently the case.

That is a bad faith attempt to paint entire segments of our citizens and their legitimate concerns as if they are somehow unreasonable.

What? Murder babies? Why are you asking if that’s hyperbolic to say? There’s no significant portion of any population in any part of the world where that isn’t hyperbolic.

I concur with the sibling comment. It’s hard to respond to this or my last comment because of how it appears your comments are made in bad faith.

Unfortunately it is clear now with a day behind us from most comments, the commenter is indeed engaging in bad faith commenting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com