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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

People don't vote on representatives. People (en masse) vote along party lines or on name/ideology recognition.

It has been well noted that this reduces to advertising budget, which lays bare the farce that is democracy. If it weren't a direct mapping from money to power, we wouldn't need campaign finance laws.

You can't change this because this is the way the system was designed to work. It is a system for legitimizing the authority of those with money and power using the branding of "the will of the people".

Funny how the people's will always lines up with the interests of the largest corporations, employers, and landowners, despite their being a tiny minority of "the people".

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While it is accurate that most people vote on party basis, it is straightforwardly not the case that advertising budgets dictate campaign victories, especially in the larger, more visible races.

You can't blame people for voting on "party line" when there are only two parties to vote on. That's a problem we can't solve, so let's not shame folks for dealing with it.

But here's the fun part: it doesn't matter who voted for the governor: once voted, the represent everyone in the state of New York, irrespective of who they voted for. When the house votes, almost unanimously to pass a bill, the governor's job is to sign it, not to stare at the wall picking their nose while checking their bank account on their phone every few minutes.

> When the house votes, almost unanimously to pass a bill, the governor's job is to sign it

Which is why the pocket veto exists. If the governor doesn't sign it or veto it, it becomes law. 10 days is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, considering it took the legislature from Feb 2nd to Dec 16th to deliver it to the Governor - 317 days. If 10 days is that important, then we should be more concerned about the 317 days.

No, we should also be concerned about the 317 days, and the state should fire said governor for refusing to do their job.

I don't like the NY governor (for a whole list of reasons), but not signing a bill and pocket vetoing it - if that's wants she wants to do - is not her "refusing to do her job". It's fully defined as something she can do by their constitution. If you don't like that, campaign for a NY State constitutional amendment to reduce the time period of a pocket veto.

You may want her to eagerly sign it - fine, vote against her in her primaries or the general election if it's that important to you. But her replacement will probably will also do something you don't like at some point. No one is ever 100% perfectly represented, especially by a governor or president.

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