All that means is that we don't have a one-person one-vote system. Some people's votes matter more than others. What we have is a case of civil inequality.

If we build a system where everyone's votes count the same (radical and extreme idea, I know), then each person will have the same fundamental incentive to vote.

Direct election of the US president would be an improvement. Expanding the House of Representatives as originally formulated, or similarly, would help. Making the Senate reflect the population better by dividing populous states, and/or a statehood option for Puerto Rico and DC would help. Striking down gerrymanders would help.

More contested down-ballot races would help. No excuse for the parties to not have strong organization and candidate recruitment at that level. No changes to laws needed for this.

> we don’t have a one-person one-vote system.

Correct, and that’s a good thing! Intelligence is not evenly distributed among individuals, and susceptibility to psyops and propaganda is a huge issue. The plain truth of the matter is that a majority of people simply aren’t qualified to weigh in on national issues. True democracy works when you’ve got a small group of like-minded individuals of roughly equal stature (13 original colonies) but not when you’ve got an entire empire (Roman republic)

No, devolving powers to the states is what makes it a federation. Having a state-representative legislative chamber makes it a federation. Electing a federal president via popular vote does not indicate defederation any more than the existence of the House of Representatives does.

The states negotiated terms before they agreed to join. Not having a popular vote is part of the reason why we have a federal system in the first place. People can argue pros and cons, but it's fairly meaningless since we're already in an established deal, and it's very unlikely that the many states will agree to undo that deal.

Amending the Constitution does seem like a fairly remote possibility, but then there's also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.

> Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states.

It would give every human, who has the right to representation, exactly proportionate influence. The weird fashy retired cops in Idaho will have to settle for having the same number of senators as Californians have.

That is not a good argument. People have a right to self-determination. The same logic of populism can be applied on a trans-national scale, even. There is no limit because under your logic, any person's vote is as good as any other's. The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom. I don't care if the entire state of California is against how I live, because they are thousands of miles away and deserve less say in how I live than my neighbors. The federal system we have strikes a balance between the two.

A president of a federation such as the US must represent the individual states equally, because there can only be one president and that seat has disproportionate power. I really think people flip flop on the popular vote issue based on whether they think it helps their particular party or not, which is unbelievably short-sighted.

> The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom.

On this specific point- do you contend that unitary republics, such as France, are inherently less free than federal entities? How are provinces less free than states? Is Canada less free than the U.S.?

Did the EU get less free after Lisbon when it transferred power from the commission and council of ministers (each state has similar influence) to the parliament (each person has similar influence)? Like, that was about the least contentious part of Lisbon; it was broadly popular. Very few people would think they lost freedom through it.

The effect I just described is just one factor affecting the freedom of a group. Sometimes you do need to have a larger entity around beyond your local government for various reasons. I would think that the potential for the worst tyranny is smaller in geographically smaller countries or units, because people can leave. For example, people who don't like a city or county can leave it. Provinces and states are also possible to leave behind if you can't stand the laws. Countries are trickier to leave because of international relations, but it is still possible. I also expect small countries are easier to leave than big ones. It's not ideal to have to move, but at least you can move away from localized issues. Some localized issues may also be avoided by seeking input from only the people who will be affected. All in all, I think it is easier to find consensus among smaller groups, and the larger a group gets the harder it is to make rules or policies that everyone is happy with.

Arbitrary lines on maps are arbitrary. North & South Dakota are far more similar than north and south California.

The lines on maps are not arbitrary. People decided them by choice and in some cases by force. You might feel no particular attachment to your state, but if another state decided that your state should be exploited in some way, your primary source of support would be your neighbors within those so-called arbitrary lines.

I used North and South Dakota for a reason. The only reason they were split was to hijack the Senate.

That is misleading. There was no state of Dakota. The two became states at the same time. Even Wikipedia says this:

>Regionalist tensions between the northern and the southern parts of the territory were present since the beginning.

So, the split was not likely about senate seats. It was about people getting along within each state.

Damn imagine if everyone's vote was equally weighted, what a disaster for democracy that would be. Mob rule!!

I sense some sarcasm. But you ought to know that the founders, along with Aristotle and other Greeks (basically, the inventors of democracy), were afraid of mobs and sought to temper the whims of the people.

States are given representation proportional to their populations, and also equal representation (in the Senate). The EC and House seats aren't just based on voter turnout, voter population, or even the actual number of citizens in the state (which is rather problematic). So this whole push for direct democracy in the presidential election is stupid. Yes, swing states are a thing, but only because the other states vote consistently in a particular way.

Another problem with using the popular vote to decide the presidential election is that it inventivizes fraud. If someone managed to corrupt a few populous states, they could generate extremely high numbers of fake votes to drown out every other state.

Current system theoretically allows for the presidency to be won even though the candidate got less than 30% of the popular vote. In my opinion the existence of such an edge case makes it undefendable.

What do you mean here by "incentivizes fraud"? Lying on the campaign trail is not fraud. In any case, the same argument about fraud still applies, you just need to target swing states.

Every system has edge cases. You can't defend the possibility of millions of people having zero representation just because they did not vote either.

I think it's obvious what fraud I'm talking about: fraudulent votes. It stands to reason that a large state can generate more fraudulent votes than a small state can generate legitimately. Fraud is always an issue but it is more of an issue with popular vote because who can question extremely high voter turnout?

Can you name edge cases of popular vote system that electoral college system does not also have?

You do realize that just because the popular vote is national does not mean that all the votes would be dumped at a desert in New Mexico and then tallied? Vote tally would still happen at the level of polling places and then aggregated - exactly how it's done in the electoral college system now. The only difference would be an introduction of one more level of aggregation (from state to nationwide). You could still detect fraud at earlier stages.

I did already name an edge case of popular vote that the electoral college system doesn't have (sorry, in another thread). Actually more than one. If a state has low turnout for any reason then their contribution to the election is proportionally diminished with popular voting. That DOES NOT happen with EC, because the weight of the state is decided by its population.

>You do realize that just because the popular vote is national does not mean that all the votes would be dumped at a desert in New Mexico and then tallied? Vote tally would still happen at the level of polling places and then aggregated - exactly how it's done in the electoral college system now.

I don't trust the vote counting systems we have now. We have unverified ballots by mail, voting without ID, and unaccountable voting machines. If you look into it you'll find that it is surprisingly easy to harvest votes from invalids at nursing homes, homeless people, and dead people. There is no way for me to to make sure my own vote is counted and no illegitimate ones are counted. Compare our elections that are increasingly uncertain for weeks or months to other countries like Argentina where everyone is required to vote and the result is known the next day.

Yeah, people that don't care enough to vote should not be weighted in, that's the whole point. Weighing them in does not mean they actually get represented. The only problem is people that want to vote but can't are going to be disenfranchised, but that is true in both systems and should be addressed separately. This is what is actually exploitable with EC - suppress the vote of a specific population within a state and you're going to kill 2 birds with 1 stone as they not only didn't vote against you, but they also will be weighted in towards you on the national scale.

Your entire point about fraud does not get worse with popular vote system so it's irrelevant here.

Does Argentina get automatic recounts? How many people are covered by a single polling station in Argentina? How many people count the votes within a single polling station? Those are all the things that'll affect how quickly the results are known, not how the votes get aggregated later. And EC can slow things down significantly more than popular vote (one slower state could be deciding factor for EC even though nationwide results would already be known because the uncertainty is too small to matter on national scale; Bush v. Gore).

I think it's different. In any case, you can imagine a scenario where different states have wildly different voter turnout. That could even happen due to a natural disaster such as the hurricanes we've seen in the past few weeks. How messed up would it be for a state ravaged by a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, or whatever to have its influence diminished because people were unable to vote? It is already bad enough that the votes could be skewed based on specific counties. But imagine the whole state losing its actual representation because of power outages and stuff. It might even encourage some states to sabotage other states, to reduce turnout.

> But imagine the whole state losing its actual representation because of power outages and stuff.

What you are describing would be a problem regardless of the presence of the electoral college.

It is more of a problem without the electoral college, because as I said the popular vote is sensitive to voter turnout. No turnout means no representation. The electors can always step up to represent their state, and if even they can't then presumably the entire election would be delayed.

I’m not sure if the electors are legally allowed to decide in the absence of voter turnout. Besides, if you can suppress popular vote, you can also suppress the electors.

It is far more likely that electors can do what they need to do. They can be substituted if some candidates become unavailable. However, there is no replacement for voters. Barring an emergency that completely stops a state from having elections, the decision will be made. I've never heard of a state election being delayed due to natural disasters or anything. There is no minimum required voter turnout for a conclusion to be reached, in any case.

That does not discredit what they said or thought on this issue. This is essentially an ad hominem.

It matters when you are pointing to the 'hominem' as political thought leaders. I think it's fair as a counter to an appeal to authority.

It would only be fair as a counter to their authority if the attack is relevant. I don't think it is relevant to drag slavery into a discussion about the nature of democracy and mob rule, or that the existence of widespread slavery on every continent at the time detracts from their insight. It is a purely tangentual argument to be had. For all your moralizing, I know for a fact that a vast majority of the whiners today would not have had the courage to fight slavery when it was happening literally everywhere. The ancient Greeks and the founders of the US have in common the fact that they laid the groundwork for the slavery-free condition we enjoy today, whether you like that or not. They were the geniuses of their time, and outstanding among all geniuses of all time.

The problem is brainwashing.

The formula is this: YOU learn all by yourself what all electable candidates say they want to do. YOU figure out all by yourself which ones LIE. One lie is enough, if they do it they keep doing it.

And then YOU chose which election program you want to vote for.

Ideally you chose what is best for the country but this is rather challenging for people. We can forgive them for being stuck thinking only of themselves.

Why would it be perfectly obvious if one is ordering food but not for elections???

Food might taste bad and you might get food poisoning. A bad choice doesn't mean years of suffering.

Does one not look at the menu card? Or do you ask your mum what to order? Do you roam around the restaurant looking what other people are eating? Do you order what CNN is screaming at you?

If people scream at you from all directions that you should order the snails in garlic butter, does that mean you will never have to look at the menu the rest of your life? You can just eat snails every day, everyone else is eating snails every day???? Why are you not eating snails?? It is the nr 1 most sold food! Don't you want snails to be the nr 1 food?

Then the restaurant switches to the cheapest worse possible snails because people will order it anyway because other people will order it.

Is this a display of good taste?

I hate apple but I buy iphone because they are good enough for what I need. I might get an android phone some day. They are good enough too.

I did actually look.

With elections no one is looking. People have no idea. Non of them! There is not one journalist who knows anything.

For each million voters one or two have watched a single video from a candidate other than the top 2. A video by a 5 year old on tiktok gets more attention online than the entire list of election programs.

I could see logic in getting advice from an expert on something or from your mum but if they know absolutely nothing about the topic?!?!

The voter is therefore brainwashed into irrelevance, she won't influence elections in any way.

>There is not one journalist who knows anything.

This seems like a brazenly false statement. Also genuinely worrying, as you're discrediting all journalists based on... your feelings? Something that has been pushed for over the last 8 years by one party under the guise of labels such as "fake news" and "mainstream media".

Maybe you meant to say "everything", but parroting anti-news propaganda is only making everyone less informed and only benefits the side that isn't campaigning in good faith.

i go over the lengthy list of registered candidates then try to find the article about them.

If the article exists it doesn't really get into their program.

You can see how many facebook likes and youtube views they have.

Jill Stein has 10k views on her most popular video. The nr 1 video in google about afroman running has 1k views. He is a famous person. There are countless other candidates.

https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2024_presidential...

The traffic isn't enough to account for global journalism.

Perhaps you want to entertain the chicken and ego concept where candidates need to be famous enough before anyone should ask what they are about.

Show me the informed journalist. I would love to read everything they ever wrote.

The presidency is not the only election on the ballot.

And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.

In many districts, your vote for US House and Senate seats largely doesn't matter, either. For many people, those are the only elections they are thinking about when it comes to November.

Senate seats are elected state-wide, so they largely go the same way as the presidential vote. If you're in a deep-red or deep-blue state (i.e., nearly all of them), your individual vote isn't going to make a difference.

House seats are district-specific, but:

  a) the re-election rate of incumbents is over 90%
  b) districts are often drawn to lock-in control for a specific party

State senate and house seats are often no better.

However, much to the credit of the sibling response, there are all kinds of local and regional races as well as ballot initiatives that are important.

Setting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote.

Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)

Bottom line: Turnout reflects the odds that an individual vote will impact the outcome.

In most races, there is little doubt (more than 80% odds) as to who will win. And this extends all the way down to the local level. And voters, candidates and political parties all know this.

Probably they couldn't explain it, but many of them will have taken to heart the idea that "my vote doesn't matter". Which is especially sad, since like you say there are potentially all kinds of local and regional races and ballot measures their vote could in fact have impacted.

It's interesting how Occupy Wall Street was ridiculed by the press. I think they were onto something even though I don't agree with almost everything else they also believed in.

There is more on your ballot than the president, you know.

Unless you happen to live in a swing area, the results for most other races conform to well known and even pre-determined trends.

There are very few such areas. Voters, candidates and the political parties know this.