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Comment by freitzkriesler2 | Hacker News Reader

I love having to explain the purpose of the electoral college to both ignorant Americans whose civics teachers failed them and blissfully ignorant foreigners who don't understand the nuances of America's representative democracy.

During the framing of the constitution, sparsely populated states didn't want to be run rampshod by heavily populated states. The framers made the electoral college system to reduce the impact of populous states and raise the impact of less populous states so everyone gets an equal voice. Without it, you would get heavily populated states like New York and California dictating policy for the rest of the country.

America isn't nor was it ever a democracy but a republic. If and when the country abolishes the electoral college is when America balkanizes.

In short, it is by design. Think of it as affirmative action for less populous states.

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You're thinking of the great compromise that created the bicameral legislature.

The electoral college was a minor issue that was rubber stamped at the constitutional convention. It was designed to prevent states from increasing their influence by expanding the franchise (remember when the constitution was written only white land owning men could vote). And it was designed for a time when traveling up and down the east coast took weeks instead of hours.

The electoral college has also been distorted by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which fixed the size of the house of representatives. As the nation has grown since then, this is caused the inequity created by the electoral college to increase every decade.

At this point the electoral college is outdated, it's served its purpose and it's time to move on. We have an extremely strong national identity, which didn't exist when the Constitution was written. We have lots of migration between the states, why should one persons vote count less simply because of where they live?

America IS a democracy it was an extremely flawed one at its founding and there's been a stead march to improve it ever since.

I believe what you're referring to in your "American is a Republic" statement is the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin. But that quote was an answer to a question and the question was "What kind of government do you give us, a monarch or a Republic?" And Franklin responded " A Republic, if you can keep it". This is a prodemocratic statement not an anti-democratic one.

But at its core, your argument is that the states are the right unit to be protected and catered to rather than the individual/people, and I fundamentally disagree with that.

> Without it, you would get heavily populated states like New York and California dictating policy for the rest of the country.

With it, we have tyranny of the ignorant.

Ignorant is maybe too mean, but if I had to use one catch all word that can apply to policies (not necessarily people), esp regarding things like transgender care, abortion and climate change, I think it fits.

I wouldn't say "ignorant", but things like voting against progressive energy policies because your state economy is dying a slow death [0] shouldn't be allowed.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/politics/manchin-reelection-b...

I edited my answer to clarify it refers to policies not people, but as a single catch all word I think it fits pretty well. Although in the example you linked 'corrupt' would be much more apt.

> With it, we have tyranny of the ignorant.

Good.

Hardly.

The framers made the electoral college system to reduce the impact of populous states and raise the impact of less populous states so everyone gets an equal voice. Without it, you would get heavily populated states like New York and California dictating policy for the rest of the country.

And what we now have is low population states thwarting the will of the majority due to their numbers in the senate. It’s a major power imbalance. Every time a Democrat is elected President Texas legislators threaten to secede. At some point California and others will also start threatening this unless the power structure is rebalanced.

> And what we now have is low population states thwarting the will of the majority due to their numbers in the senate. It’s a major power imbalance. Every time a Democrat is elected President Texas legislators threaten to secede. At some point California and others will also start threatening this unless the power structure is rebalanced

What part of by design do you not understand?

And if anything, it's a great system because it makes people like you seethe at being thwarted for nonsense policies.

> Think of it as affirmative action for less populous states.

Not an overly popular policy these days, even with the Supreme Court.

It's salami slicing. Get states to join by promising them autonomy, then slowly take that autonomy away. The same is happening with the EU.

> America isn't nor was it ever a democracy but a republic.

Contra:

> Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.

> The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.

> When founding thinkers such as James Madison spoke of democracy, they were usually referring to direct democracy, what Madison frequently labeled “pure” democracy. Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” […]

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-consti...

* https://archive.ph/FbuL5

> In short, what we call “representative democracy” today — a system of government where people elect leaders to make policy — is what the founders called a “republic.” Their attacks on “democracy” in the Athenian sense does not mean that America is not a democracy in the contemporary sense.

* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21507713/mike-lee-de...

The use of the term/idea has also been 'weaponized' for a number of decades, and modern usage is just a rehashing:

> Republicans have long proclaimed that “we are not a democracy.” In the 1960s, the distinction became particularly linked with the John Birch Society, an anti-Communist group associated with a rising populist right. The idea offered a historical righteousness for the group’s opposition to desegregation and multi-racial democracy. “For us baby-boomers,” Ed Kilgore noted in New York Magazine in 2019, “the Birchers’ use of the term republic to justify all sorts of artificial restraints on popular majorities rings familiar.”

> As Jamelle Bouie has written for the New York Times, the phrase invokes the idea that the Founders designed our system of government to combat the tyranny of the majority—but it misreads the substance of their arguments and becomes instead an argument for minority rule. “The point of the slogan isn’t to describe who we are but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics,” Bouie writes, “to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things.”

[…]

> Implicit in the “we are not a democracy” cant is the notion that it doesn’t matter that a majority of Americans disagree with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or that five of the Supreme Court justices who made that decision were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Instead of “the United States is not a democracy,” Republicans should just say what they mean: “The United States should be governed by minority rule.”

* https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/11/democracy-repu...

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