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Comment by skinnymuch | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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