The fairness of the Electoral College and other election processes

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  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    People have been calling for the dismantling of the Electoral College long, long before Bush v Gore. @orfeo I think you have a bit of tunnel vision here.

    I'm sure they were. But the popularity of that call increased markedly after 2016.

    Yes, a problem that exists in theory (i.e. one that hadn't come up since the Gilded Age) is usually seen as a lot less pressing than one that's come up twice in the last five elections (and which one of the major party's main election strategy seems to be to make it three out of six). The theoretical possibility of perpetual minority rule is a lot less urgent than people actively trying to achieve perpetual minority rule.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    The first principle involved is that whoever gets the most votes should win the election. That's pretty basic democratic theory.

    No matter how many times you say this, you still show no sign of recognising that the phrase "the most votes" tells you precisely nothing about which votes you are counting.

    Not only does it tell you nothing about whether you decided to group votes into, say, congressional districts. It also doesn't tell you anything about whether you are using a first past the post voting system or a preferential system of some kind.

    I live in a country that uses preferential systems such that it's quite common for the person who got the most first-preference votes to not win. And a heck of a lot people who look at these things think that this is way, way more equitable than a first-past-the-post system. We do away with so much of the tactical voting nonsense of having to vote for someone you don't particular like to prevent someone even worse winning. We do away with all the fears of the left-wing or the right-wing vote being split: if there are 2 fairly similar candidates, the one with the lower vote is eliminated but then most of their bloc will be diverted to the better supported of the 2, rather than leading to the election of someone that supporters of both of those candidates didn't want.

    <snip>

    Your basic democratic theory is so basic it hurts.

    It's not exactly my democratic theory, it's how most elections in the U.S. are run. I have no problem with a ranked preference system. (Maine has adopted it and will be the first American state to cast it's ballots in a presidential election this way in one week's time.) And yet even in a ranked preference system the second place finisher (once enough lower polling preferences have been re-assigned to give one candidate a majority) typically does not get to assume office.
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Do we need to remind ourselves that the election on 8th November is to choose electors to select a president?

    I think we need to remind ourselves that U.S. Election Day is on November 3rd this year. DO NOT LISTEN TO KWESI IF YOU ARE AN AMERICAN VOTER!!! If you wait until November 8th to vote you will be unable to cast a ballot.
  • The states have the power to determine how electors are chosen. In the early years of the US, electors were chosen by state assemblies and, I think in two instances, were named by the governor. 48 of the 50 states do a winner-take-all choice of party lists of electors, while Maine and Nebraska elect them in each congressional district, with a party list of two electors going to the majority candidate. As students of this arcane topic are aware, several states have signed on to a compact to award all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote once a certain number of states agree.

    The Nebraska/Maine approach would address the real problem of majority states being totally ignored by presidential campaigns (e.g., why would a Republican candidate ever bother with California aside from fundraising and, conversely, Democratic candidates need never spend a half-hour thinking about the Pacific NW).

    The problem is that congressional districts are subject to gerrymandering. It's not a big problem in Maine and Nebraska which have, respectively, two and three congressional districts, but with more populous states this could be a problem. For instance, Wisconsin is pretty egregiously gerrymandered. In the 2018 congressional election Democratic candidates collectively received 1,367,497 votes while Republican candidates got 1,172,993. Despite this Republicans walked off with 5 of Wisconsin's 8 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Croesos: I think we need to remind ourselves that U.S. Election Day is on November 3rd this year. DO NOT LISTEN TO KWESI IF YOU ARE AN AMERICAN VOTER!!! If you wait until November 8th to vote you will be unable to cast a ballot.

    Damn! There goes my shot at saving the election for Trump! Come to think of it, though, given the weight of the postal vote, a high turnout on the day, which I forget, may be his only chance.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    The problem is that congressional districts are subject to gerrymandering. It's not a big problem in Maine and Nebraska which have, respectively, two and three congressional districts, but with more populous states this could be a problem. For instance, Wisconsin is pretty egregiously gerrymandered. In the 2018 congressional election Democratic candidates collectively received 1,367,497 votes while Republican candidates got 1,172,993. Despite this Republicans walked off with 5 of Wisconsin's 8 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
    When this happens the election should be declared void, the districting declared corrupt with blame and corruption charges laid at the feet of the perpetrators who may never be involved again or hold any public office and suffer a term of imprisonment. They should also be made to pay the costs of non-partisan re-districting and the subsequent fair election.

  • orfeo wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Once one starts to advocate the proportional distribution of a state's college vote then why not just have a direct election of the president because it gives each popular vote the same weight?

    No it doesn't, because the ratio of voters to electors is not constant.

    This is true. Although it doesn't vary all that much in the scheme of things, given that the number of electors is linked to the number of representatives in Congress, which in turn is largely linked to population, in the House of Reps.

    Though the electoral votes aren't linked to the proportion of votes cast in the state (except for Maine and Nebraska afaik).
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    The main problem with most systems of democracy is that having 51% of the voters means you win 100% of the votes, and the 49% don't ever win.
    Elections in multiple candidate constituencies sometimes mitigate that by having a system whereby voters who have elected one candidate have a reduced voice in electing subsequent candidates.

    In a multi-member constituency, with 51% of the votes going one way and 49% going the other, you'd elect roughly equal numbers from each side, and the 51% side would get the extra if you had an odd number in total.

    In a single-member constituency with some kind of ranked voting system, it's likely that you would develop compromise candidates that would end up winning. Yes, you're right - if 51% vote for a single winner, that person wins, but if you've got a sensible ranked voting scheme, it's easier to get a third candidate going, and you may well find that a centrist compromise attracts much of the vote.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Sorry, I cut my train of thought short before developing it. What I was going to say is that ideally you'd want to set up Parliament or Congress or whatever so that every time one faction voted a law through their chance of winning the next vote was reduced.
    There would be... um... problems in working out how to implement such a thing practically.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Sorry, I cut my train of thought short before developing it. What I was going to say is that ideally you'd want to set up Parliament or Congress or whatever so that every time one faction voted a law through their chance of winning the next vote was reduced.
    There would be... um... problems in working out how to implement such a thing practically.

    That's an "interesting" set of rules to play by. It's easy enough to implement - each member has a vote, their vote starts with weight 1. When they are on the winning side of a vote, multiply their weight by 0.9 (or something). Sum weighted votes.

    Analyzing this might be a fun exercise in game theory.
  • Well. This is a fun thread to catch up with.


    Just a couple of comments:
    1) No, in a strict, legal-definition sense that takes 'gerrymandering' to mean 'the drawing of electoral district boundaries such as to benefit one party at the expense of all other rational influences on the boundaries', the US presidential election hasn't been gerrymandered (unless there's something about the Dakotas, and that's probably long enough ago for the world to have come to live with it). But in a broader sense where 'gerrymander' is shorthand for 'electoral malpractice through perverting the structure and system of elections', then yes, it has been gerrymandered: this loose definition of gerrymandering includes issues like voter suppression and generally making it difficult to exercise the ballot. It's a shame that we have managed to get diverted from the important point by arguing about definitions.
    2) Any electoral system is a compromise, which has to keep enough people fairly happy. The problem that we now see is that twice in the last twenty years (the last five presidential elections), the Electoral College system has produced a result which is at variance with the popular vote. This seems to mean that those who are happy with a majority vote no longer find that the Electoral College delivers a result in line with their expectations. You don't have to be a fan of a single national vote to see that something needs to change to rebuild a coalition where enough people believe that the method of choosing a president is something that they are broadly happy with

    (n.b. all written from a UK perspective, so by no means impossible that I'm seeing the mote in the USA's eye while missing the beam in my own.)
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    My thinking was more that if a representative casts their vote on the losing side they got to keep it. The winners would also keep fractional surplus votes. But I think the benefits from gaming the system in a bad sense would outweigh the benefits from negotiating and seeking compromise.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Sorry, I cut my train of thought short before developing it. What I was going to say is that ideally you'd want to set up Parliament or Congress or whatever so that every time one faction voted a law through their chance of winning the next vote was reduced.
    There would be... um... problems in working out how to implement such a thing practically.

    The other complication is that it would seem to favor the status quo (i.e. the current situation that requires no votes to change). Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your assessment of the current status quo.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    My thinking was more that if a representative casts their vote on the losing side they got to keep it. The winners would also keep fractional surplus votes. But I think the benefits from gaming the system in a bad sense would outweigh the benefits from negotiating and seeking compromise.

    So unanimous votes don't really cost you, but narrowly-won ones do? That's better - it eliminates some of the more obvious "tactical" plays, but I think there are still big problems.

    Suppose, for example, a government has two unpopular proposals that it can't get more than 40% support for. Under this system, the government would propose one thing, and lose the vote 60-40. The votes of the opposition would then be de-weighted, meaning that the government would win second bad idea with only 40% support.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Sorry, I cut my train of thought short before developing it. What I was going to say is that ideally you'd want to set up Parliament or Congress or whatever so that every time one faction voted a law through their chance of winning the next vote was reduced.
    There would be... um... problems in working out how to implement such a thing practically.
    The other complication is that it would seem to favor the status quo (i.e. the current situation that requires no votes to change). Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your assessment of the current status quo.
    Suppose, for example, a government has two unpopular proposals that it can't get more than 40% support for. Under this system, the government would propose one thing, and lose the vote 60-40. The votes of the opposition would then be de-weighted, meaning that the government would win second bad idea with only 40% support.
    In a family, if two of the children like sausages and one likes fish fingers (and there are no absolute refusals to eat that to complicate matters, and it is not practical to cook two separate dishes each night, etc) it seems fair that you should serve sausages twice as often as fish fingers rather than always serving sausages.

    The basic principle therefore would be that if an agenda has support of half the population half of it should be implemented. The one half of the population should be able to say to the other that they got their way last time and now it's their turn.

    So if half the population want no change and half the population want to enact change then the half who want to enact change should enact half their agenda. If the two halves of the population have incompatible agendas then they either cancel each other out, or they have to negotiate some compromise. I suppose that's a presumption in favour of the status quo, but it's not obvious that there's any more democratic course of action.
    Likewise, if Leorning Cniht's government has five policies it wants to implement with 40% support for each it should be able to implement two of those policies according to some compromise between whichever two it wants the most and whichever two the rest of the country object to least.
    I haven't thought my proposed voting mechanism through far enough to know if it would give that result. It seems to me that there are a lot of points at which the general idea may not be workable: for example, the above all presumes that the relevant agendas stay coherent if half-implemented or implemented half-heartedly.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    It seems to me that there are a lot of points at which the general idea may not be workable: for example, the above all presumes that the relevant agendas stay coherent if half-implemented or implemented half-heartedly.

    Such as settling the question of whether to build a bridge across the bay by compromising and building a bridge that goes halfway across the bay?

    I can also see a situation where representatives game Dafyd's system by arranging so that just enough of their members vote in favor of a proposition to pass it and other supporters voting "present" or being absent from the vote. Keeping enough unpenalized voters for the next controversy.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    Likewise, if Leorning Cniht's government has five policies it wants to implement with 40% support for each it should be able to implement two of those policies according to some compromise between whichever two it wants the most and whichever two the rest of the country object to least.

    But if the government controls the legislative agenda, it can put forward those five policies, plus another seven or eight that the opposition would find even more objectionable, and force the (majority) opposition to burn its votes.

    Your proposal has no mechanism to encourage a government to be constructive and seek compromise - in fact, it seems to promote the opposite. Why bother compromising - just force a whole load more votes, and you'll get more of your agenda through.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    People have been calling for the dismantling of the Electoral College long, long before Bush v Gore. @orfeo I think you have a bit of tunnel vision here.

    I'm sure they were. But the popularity of that call increased markedly after 2016.

    So. The. Fuck. What?
  • orfeo wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Once one starts to advocate the proportional distribution of a state's college vote then why not just have a direct election of the president because it gives each popular vote the same weight?

    No it doesn't, because the ratio of voters to electors is not constant.

    This is true. Although it doesn't vary all that much in the scheme of things, given that the number of electors is linked to the number of representatives in Congress, which in turn is largely linked to population, in the House of Reps.

    Largely my ass. Wyoming gets 1 representative for its 62k residents. California gets 53 for its population of over 39 million. Making a voter in Wyoming roughly 100 times more powerful in the House of Representatives than a voter in California. That doesn't seem terribly equitable to me. Maybe you have a different POV. It's wrong.
  • @mousethief 's point gains validity when one considers the opening lines of the US Constitution (We the people..., not We the constituent states...).

    While many states have gerrymandered districts, which would of course result in possibly warped results, gerrymandering is not inevitable. I believe California now has a non-partisan commission to determine boundaries, and aside from naked self-interest, I do not ssee why this cannot be adopted elsewhere.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    mousethief: Wyoming gets 1 representative for its 62k residents. California gets 53 for its population of over 39 million. Making a voter in Wyoming roughly 100 times more powerful in the House of Representatives than a voter in California.

    Doesn't Wyoming have a population of 578,759 K, not 62k.? California with 39.51 m has a representative per 745.47k? If that is the case then the disparity seems nothing to get worked up about, given Wyoming has only one Representative. What you might consider egregious is that California and Wyoming have the same number of senators, and that Wyoming has a college elector per 192,840 of the population, and California has a college elector per 718,404 of the population.
  • The President is the president of the United States. He is not the president of the people. The electoral college is set up so that each state has a say in who is elected. Only two states, Nebraska and Maine, allow each congressional district in the state have one vote, but two of the votes will be for the majority of the state as a whole. For instance, Maine has two congressional districts. If one district votes for Trump, he will get the vote of the district. If the other votes for Biden, he will get that district's vote. But if the at large vote for the whole state has a slight majority for Trump, then he will get the two at large votes. So Maine would split 3 for Trump, one for Biden. Several states only have one congressional district but two Senators, like Wyoming. If the congressional district in Wyoming goes one way or the other, the two at large votes would also go the same way. There is no way they would be able to get over that. By the way, an elector in Wyoming represents 150.000 people, but an elector in California represents 440.000 people (This is off the top of my head, but it shows the disparity between the power of an electoral vote from Wyoming vs California).
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The President is the president of the United States.
    That's just because it's the name of the country. "President of the United People" would sound stupid.
  • Kwesi wrote: »
    mousethief: Wyoming gets 1 representative for its 62k residents. California gets 53 for its population of over 39 million. Making a voter in Wyoming roughly 100 times more powerful in the House of Representatives than a voter in California.

    Doesn't Wyoming have a population of 578,759 K, not 62k.? California with 39.51 m has a representative per 745.47k? If that is the case then the disparity seems nothing to get worked up about, given Wyoming has only one Representative. What you might consider egregious is that California and Wyoming have the same number of senators, and that Wyoming has a college elector per 192,840 of the population, and California has a college elector per 718,404 of the population.

    So I wrote it wrong; 620k is the number I got from a quick google. But certainly not 578,759k. Wyoming no way in hell has 500 million people.
  • Dave W wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The President is the president of the United States.
    That's just because it's the name of the country. "President of the United People" would sound stupid.

    This. That's a totally lame argument, @Gramps49.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    mousethief So I wrote it wrong; 620k is the number I got from a quick google. But certainly not 578,759k.

    Oh, K! A slip of the something of other. Apologies to California, too! Too early AM, I fear. I think the remainder of the post makes my point pretty clear.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Ruth wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    People have been calling for the dismantling of the Electoral College long, long before Bush v Gore. @orfeo I think you have a bit of tunnel vision here.

    I'm sure they were. But the popularity of that call increased markedly after 2016.

    Please offer some support for this claim.

    Sorry, do you want me to go through all the material from American friends on Facebook and provide you with links, or something? No. It's not a claim about hard data, and I'm not a sociological researcher. Go find your own sociological researcher.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    The first principle involved is that whoever gets the most votes should win the election. That's pretty basic democratic theory.

    No matter how many times you say this, you still show no sign of recognising that the phrase "the most votes" tells you precisely nothing about which votes you are counting.

    Not only does it tell you nothing about whether you decided to group votes into, say, congressional districts. It also doesn't tell you anything about whether you are using a first past the post voting system or a preferential system of some kind.

    I live in a country that uses preferential systems such that it's quite common for the person who got the most first-preference votes to not win. And a heck of a lot people who look at these things think that this is way, way more equitable than a first-past-the-post system. We do away with so much of the tactical voting nonsense of having to vote for someone you don't particular like to prevent someone even worse winning. We do away with all the fears of the left-wing or the right-wing vote being split: if there are 2 fairly similar candidates, the one with the lower vote is eliminated but then most of their bloc will be diverted to the better supported of the 2, rather than leading to the election of someone that supporters of both of those candidates didn't want.

    <snip>

    Your basic democratic theory is so basic it hurts.

    It's not exactly my democratic theory, it's how most elections in the U.S. are run. I have no problem with a ranked preference system. (Maine has adopted it and will be the first American state to cast it's ballots in a presidential election this way in one week's time.) And yet even in a ranked preference system the second place finisher (once enough lower polling preferences have been re-assigned to give one candidate a majority) typically does not get to assume office.

    My goodness, isn't it convenient how you can redefine "whoever gets the most votes" in whatever way you choose to make it look like this is your idea and you're right, but it's somehow NOT my idea and I'm wrong?
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Dave W wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The President is the president of the United States.
    That's just because it's the name of the country. "President of the United People" would sound stupid.

    You say that like the name of the country is random. When it's a hell of a lot less random than the names of most countries.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    Dave W wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The President is the president of the United States.
    That's just because it's the name of the country. "President of the United People" would sound stupid.

    You say that like the name of the country is random. When it's a hell of a lot less random than the names of most countries.
    I'm saying that citing the title as if it's some kind of argument against popular election of the president is stupid. Hopefully political discourse among the people of the United Mexican States hasn't devolved to this level of inanity.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Gramps49: By the way, an elector in Wyoming represents 150.000 people, but an elector in California represents 440.000 people (This is off the top of my head, but it shows the disparity between the power of an electoral vote from Wyoming vs California).

    Is that right? According to my information Wyoming has a population of 549, 914 (2020) and 3 electoral college votes = 183, 305 per person. California has a population of 39,937,500 (2020) and 55 electoral college votes = 726,136 per person.
  • Furtive GanderFurtive Gander Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    That's a hell of a discrepancy (taking your figures Kwesi or yours Gramps49) between Electors per head of population. But then how the Electors are chosen, how they are directed to vote and what happens if they disobey (and variations of these between States) are bigger problems it seems to me - trumped by winner-takes-all directive in most States.
  • That's a hell of a discrepancy (taking your figures Kwesi or yours Gramps49) between Electors per head of population. But then how the Electors are chosen, how they are directed to vote and what happens if they disobey (and variations of these between States) are bigger problems it seems to me

    Given the number of faithless electors, that does not seem to me to be a bigger problem. The discrepancy between the electors/population and the winner take all nature of most of the state wide races has a much larger impact.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    The discrepancy between the electors/population and the winner take all nature of most of the state wide races has a much larger impact.
    I think those are two distinct problems. That each California voter has far less effect on the final result than each Hawaii voter is one source of unfairness, especially as the over-represented states taken together have a significantly different political complexion from the underrepresented states taken together.
    That all the votes in the large states go as a lump is another different problem. Conservative voters in California are even less represented than progressive voters in the state. The US election is it seems much more sensitive than it should be to a few votes either way in Florida.
  • That's a hell of a discrepancy (taking your figures Kwesi or yours Gramps49) between Electors per head of population. But then how the Electors are chosen, how they are directed to vote and what happens if they disobey (and variations of these between States) are bigger problems it seems to me

    Given the number of faithless electors, that does not seem to me to be a bigger problem. The discrepancy between the electors/population and the winner take all nature of most of the state wide races has a much larger impact.

    Yes, I remembered the winner-takes-all aspect and added a line (before you posted) but hadn't thought of Faithless Electors being a factor.

    Surely it's high time to dump the EC as there doesn't need to be anyone with "views of their own" coming between the voters and the result. The system was born in a time when those chosen Electors would travel for days to meet and vote. Today, a verified email or video link would do it all in seconds. (They could even shrink the time between knowing the result and letting the new President take over. When you have a loathsome crook as now, they have far too much opportuinity to do harm and spite the winner).

    If there has to be some account taken of smaller states, just scale up their local vote totals results by, say, 20% (or whatever seems not too outrageously unreasonable) before adding up the national total votes and declaring a democratic (fast) result.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    The discrepancy between the electors/population and the winner take all nature of most of the state wide races has a much larger impact.
    I think those are two distinct problems. That each California voter has far less effect on the final result than each Hawaii voter is one source of unfairness, especially as the over-represented states taken together have a significantly different political complexion from the underrepresented states taken together.
    That all the votes in the large states go as a lump is another different problem. Conservative voters in California are even less represented than progressive voters in the state. The US election is it seems much more sensitive than it should be to a few votes either way in Florida.

    This was exactly what I was getting at a page or two back.
  • That's a hell of a discrepancy (taking your figures Kwesi or yours Gramps49) between Electors per head of population. But then how the Electors are chosen, how they are directed to vote and what happens if they disobey (and variations of these between States) are bigger problems it seems to me

    Given the number of faithless electors, that does not seem to me to be a bigger problem. The discrepancy between the electors/population and the winner take all nature of most of the state wide races has a much larger impact.

    Yes, I remembered the winner-takes-all aspect and added a line (before you posted) but hadn't thought of Faithless Electors being a factor.

    In which case I'm not sure what you were referring to here ?
    But then how the Electors are chosen, how they are directed to vote and what happens if they disobey
  • I wasn't meaning something different, just seeing the title didn't remind me of what I'd said!
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Dafyd: I think those are two distinct problems.

    Yup! The problem is that the college illustrates, inter alia, the problem of reconciling the representation of people with the representation of places. The territorial components i.e. the senatorial element is almost a fifth (18.6 per cent) of the weighting, which is not insubstantial. Furthermore the balance between the two element varies substantially between states. Taking the example of Wyoming and California, for example, two thirds of Wyoming's college allocation is derived from place (inhabited or not), whereas in California a mere 3.6 per cent of its allocation is derived from territory. (Hawaii 50 per cent derived from place). There are 12 states where a half or more of the EC vote allocation is with respect to territory; 14 where 25-49 per cent is territorial; 20 where 10-24 per cent is territorial; 4 less than 10 per cent.

    It is difficult to defend the EC in democratic terms, and its credibility has rested on the fortuitous alignment of the college result with the popular verdict of the wider electorate. Should the dissonant outcome of 2016 become a feature of the system it could prove a source of serious discontent, especially if the court sides with the unpopular party in resulting legal disputes. There will be few Al Gores.

    Of course, we are discussing the issue in relation to a Republican advantage, but if Florida and Texas drift towards the Democrats, arising from demographic trends, the shoe could shift to the other foot.
  • If there has to be some account taken of smaller states, just scale up their local vote totals results by, say, 20% (or whatever seems not too outrageously unreasonable) before adding up the national total votes and declaring a democratic (fast) result.

    This begs two very important questions. Why does a voter in a "small state" deserve to count for more than a voter in a more populous one? I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power. Why are people from "smaller states" more worthy of wielding power than people from large states?

    BTW, "small states" is something of a misnomer. Alaska is America's largest state by land mass but its third least populous. Similarly Montana ranks fourth by size and forty-third by population. "Less populous" seems a lot clearer than "large" or "small".

    The other question is where is the dividing line between "large" and "small" states? What's the threshold below which the people of a state are more worthy to hold the reins of government? I'm not sure why "one person, one vote" is so hard to accept. It's how the U.S. handles every other election besides the presidency and vice presidency.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Should the dissonant outcome of 2016 become a feature of the system it could prove a source of serious discontent, especially if the court sides with the unpopular party in resulting legal disputes.
    This is the big concern for democrats, both small-d and big-D. If one party abandons the principle of majority rule, it could leverage its power in a biased system to increase that bias to permanently disadvantage the opposition, through the actions of a biased senate, a president elected via a biased EC, and a court system dominated by judges nominated and approved by that senate and president.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Dave W wrote: »
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Should the dissonant outcome of 2016 become a feature of the system it could prove a source of serious discontent, especially if the court sides with the unpopular party in resulting legal disputes.
    This is the big concern for democrats, both small-d and big-D. If one party abandons the principle of majority rule, it could leverage its power in a biased system to increase that bias to permanently disadvantage the opposition, through the actions of a biased senate, a president elected via a biased EC, and a court system dominated by judges nominated and approved by that senate and president.

    This is one feature of a democratic system that's not amenable to correction by voting. If the electoral process is captured and manipulated there's not much voters can do to correct it. I'm reminded of several early twentieth century Supreme Court opinions that if African Americans in the American South wanted to change their regular disenfranchisement they needed to do so by voting rather than appealing to the courts to resolve a political question. I'm not sure whether the contradiction there was willfully ignored or if there was just general cluelessness.
  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    (Please note I am arguing purely in principle. I have no opinion on whether Wyomingers are actually a minority that needs protection, and the Electoral College does not seem a very good system for giving out more power. But I note that most EU institutions work on this principle, i.e., smaller member states get proportionately more influence per head of population, so it isn't completely outlandish.)

    [Also: I had never realised how small some US states are in terms of population until this thread.]
  • Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    Then what do you do when the minority is abusing that power and acting against the best interest of the majority?
  • Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    That's always been the argument the very wealthy have against democracy as an institution. The poor always seem to outnumber the rich, so it's "unfair" that these more numerous poor can outvote these relatively few rich.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    The question arises as to whether the college system could be challenged under the 14th Amendment (Equal Protection of the Laws), though one doubts the present court would be minded to consider the issue. The reduction of the senatorial component to 1 per state would reduce the territorial dimension from 18.6 per cent (100/538) to 10.2 (50/488) of the total. It's difficult to see how politically such an amendment would be possible given the almost certain congressional opposition from the smaller states. Progressives are probably better concentrating their efforts on the depoliticisation of registration and voting procedures.
  • Kwesi wrote: »
    The reduction of the senatorial component to 1 per state would reduce the territorial dimension from 18.6 per cent (100/538) to 10.2 (50/488) of the total. It's difficult to see how politically such an amendment would be possible given the almost certain congressional opposition from the smaller states.

    The other option to achieve the same end, which would not require a Constitutional amendment, would involve expanding the House of Representatives. The size of the House is set by statute, so a simple piece of legislation would do the trick. Bumping it up to 835 members would give every state at least two representatives. The only question is whether a body of that size could function.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    That's always been the argument the very wealthy have against democracy as an institution. The poor always seem to outnumber the rich, so it's "unfair" that these more numerous poor can outvote these relatively few rich.

    You're the one who said you 'got' the concept of protecting the rights of minorities. I'm familiar with strawmen as a debating tactic against other people, but against your own posts???
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Croesos: Bumping it up to 835 members would give every state at least two representatives. The only question is whether a body of that size could function.

    How about the National People's Congress of China (2,980 members), and the UK House of Lords (797 members)?!






  • mousethief wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    Then what do you do when the minority is abusing that power and acting against the best interest of the majority?

    Well, as I say, I am purely discussing principle, so the only answer I can give is a bit of a cop-out: everything is a tradeoff, and you have to decide whether the risk is worth it based on the circumstances.

    (In the EU there have certainly been cases of member states, or even sub-regions within member states, holding everyone else over a barrel.)
  • Ricardus wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    Then what do you do when the minority is abusing that power and acting against the best interest of the majority?

    Well, as I say, I am purely discussing principle, so the only answer I can give is a bit of a cop-out: everything is a tradeoff, and you have to decide whether the risk is worth it based on the circumstances.

    (In the EU there have certainly been cases of member states, or even sub-regions within member states, holding everyone else over a barrel.)

    So in other words there is no good reason to have minority rule, and one huge good reason to have majority rule.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I get the idea of protecting the rights of minorities, but we're not talking about the rights of minorities, we're talking about assigning power.

    In principle, that's two sides of the same coin, though, isn't it? A minority needs protection because they have less power, so you level up by giving them more power.

    That's always been the argument the very wealthy have against democracy as an institution. The poor always seem to outnumber the rich, so it's "unfair" that these more numerous poor can outvote these relatively few rich.

    You're the one who said you 'got' the concept of protecting the rights of minorities. I'm familiar with strawmen as a debating tactic against other people, but against your own posts???
    I don't think it's necessary to equate "protecting the rights of minorities" with "giving them more power" in the sense of overweighting their votes in a political process. When people are protesting for "X rights!" they're not usually saying "X votes should count double!" I think they're more often saying "X people should be allowed to do what they want in sphere of activity Y without restraint by the non-X majority!" (though this is rather too prolix for a hand-carried sign.)
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