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The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy. F

The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy. For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of the people in California are represented. "Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in a tyranny of the minority. People are choosing to actively leave rural communities and congregate in urban areas; this does not on its face mean that their concerns have become less important. Moreover, people congregating in urban areas tend to be center- and left- leaning, so skewing the Presidential vote towards urban areas also results in US politics as a whole shifting to the right. It also results in a judiciary that is more conservative than the population as a whole. There are only eight states in America that have more people than Los Angeles county.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? [1] http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280 http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-th... [2] http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php

zaroth 7y ago
Conversely, there are many issues where California can wag the dog by instituting state-specific policies which effectively drag the whole country with it. Some people like what California does with its state-specific policies. Some people even choose to live there. If the Executive branch was less powerful and the States retained more of what they were originally intended to oversee for themselves, I might have less of a problem with California liberals electing the Executive for the whole country. As it is, California has 53 of 435 seats in Congress and 55 electoral votes. The disparity with Wyoming is just because the minimum is 3 per state, and Wyoming’s population is minuscule. If you eliminate the per-state minimum I expect there would be large geographical areas of the country which would eventually become uninhabitable / unsustainable.
- pfisch 7y ago
  Because of the EC I would argue that in most states, including California, your vote effectively doesn't matter at all. Unless you are in a purple state you basically don't have a vote, and politicians can ignore your entire State. So while the EC does empower some rural voters, in reality it effectively disenfranchises most of the country.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    But this proves the point. The issue you are having at the state level is a dominant majority makes the views of the minority irrelevant. And to be clear, the EC does not disenfranchise all the voters in states like CA, just the minority voters. This is actually precisely what the Senate and the Electoral College is designed to mitigate.
    - chillwaves 7y ago
      it invalidates all voters. Overvotes are a thing. You can have 90% of CA vote against a candidate and it won't mean anything more than 51% voting against. So roughly half of the votes in all non competitive states do not count.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Exactly. I live in NYC. I still vote, but really it doesn't matter whom I vote for since there's an approximately 100% chance of New York's electoral votes going to the Democratic candidate. On the other hand, Kansas hasn't voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson; I'm sure people there don't feel particularly enfranchised either.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    That's not an argument against the Electoral College per se, but rather an argument against letting states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote.
Mirioron 7y ago
If rural issues aren't handled then you'll have even more urbanization and even more expensive housing. The odds are already attacked against rural life. >Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? So instead you want even more people from Nevada and Arkansas to move to LAC, because that's where politicians will pay attention?
- tempestn 7y ago
  That doesn't seem any more likely to me than Californians moving to Wyoming to make their vote count today.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    The difference is that while the vote of each Californian might have less impact on the outcome of elections, there are so many of them that the problems that California has to deal with become important enough that politicians won't ignore them. If you make the situation work the other way around, then Wyoming's problems become even less important than they are right now and you can pretty much just ignore them and campaign in a certain county instead. If you don't handle people's problems then that makes them more likely to move, to seek a better future elsewhere.
    - tempestn 7y ago
      Thanks for the thoughtful response. I can see how people would feel that way. Can also understand how people on the other side are frustrated when a minority of the population has disproportionate power though. So as with most things it sounds like there's no easy/perfect solution.
theli0nheart 7y ago
> There are only eight states in America that have more people than Los Angeles county.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? Why would Arkansas or Nevada have joined a union of states where their votes mean essentially nothing?
- cj 7y ago
  That logic doesn't work. It can be applied in reverse to invalidate your point: Why would California have joined a union of states where their votes mean 1/4 of Wyoming's?
  - theli0nheart 7y ago
    Sure, California's votes may mean less on a per capita basis, but if you're asserting that California is under-represented compared to Wyoming on a national basis, you're going to have to give some supporting evidence there. That's a pretty wild claim.
    - cj 7y ago
      > supporting evidence Read higher up in the thread: > For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1]
- d1zzy 7y ago
  To get the benefits that you would get from such a union (whether they see those as benefits is up to them): * access to single market and currency * federal loans/money * territory protection from other countries military intervention * freedom of movement (including study, work, living, etc) within all the other states of the union If states want to do some things differently that's why there are state level laws. If those states don't find that they have the right amount of freedom at the state level and think those benefits above matter less than being able to outvote 3:1 a citizen in California when it comes to presidential election then, I guess, they are free to leave the union?
pdonis 7y ago
> "Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in a tyranny of the minority. "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs? I understand rare emergencies like natural disasters require pooling national resources, but everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to day without Federal benefits.
- _vertigo 7y ago
  > "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. The point they're making is that while it was designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority, it goes too far and results in a tyranny of the minority. > Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs? I understand rare emergencies like natural disasters require pooling national resources, but everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to day without Federal benefits. No one mentioned federal benefits. We are talking about the relative voting power of a voter in one area versus another in the presidential election. Let's not get distracted here.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > No one mentioned federal benefits. Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care? In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd. The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy. It's not to address the individual concerns of every voter or the local concerns of every city, county, etc. Similar remarks apply to the Federal government more generally. The fact that everyone takes it for granted now that the Federal government is supposed to address everyone's concerns is a sign of how corrupt and inefficient our system has become. Everyone judges their Senators and Representatives, not according to how well they take care of national issues, but how much pork they send home.
mc32 7y ago
This is somewhat balanced by representation in the other house of Congress. It’s not only the US which has to balance rural vs urban electorates. Some are even further down the spectrum like Japan where rural areas have even larger influence than cities compared to other democracies. But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency.
- munk-a 7y ago
  > But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency. This argument would be accurate if we lived in a mercantile oriented world still, but there are plenty of countries that are entirely on other countries for basic necessities. While I can sympathize with the fact that farmers have gotten the rough end of the stick from seed corporations (like Monsanto) lately and that they have been forced into incredibly thin profit margins their work isn't inherently more valuable because it results in edible objects. There are plenty of countries out there with a net import of food like the UAE, Germany, Russian, Japan, Egypt and Venezuela - that's a pretty diverse group of varying GDP per capita and political stability so I think it's pretty safe to dismiss any concerns of a strategic food reserve.
- factotvm 7y ago
  You imply people in the countryside own the means of producing food, but the consolidation of agriculture tells a different story.
- illvm 7y ago
  It would be somewhat balanced if there wasn't a cap on the number of representatives and there was 1 rep per N population. But that's not the case. So even in the House there is an imbalance.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  That would be a valid concern if food weren't so ridiculously easy to grow. The entire agricultural segment of the US economy is less than 1% of GDP.
sgregnt 7y ago
So why not let the red states quit? And resolve the union? Los angeles county can then do whatever they want.
corodra 7y ago
To your arguement about why do LA residents count less. I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. Do you want someone who has never farmed in their lives. Probably never even picked up a shovel, have a say in the rules and regs about agriculture throughout the midwest? Same goes vice versa. Country folk who hate living in concrete jungles shouldn't make rules for city dwellers. Thus an equal vote, isn't equal. Because my one vote for some other industry I don't know isn't fair for someone who lives it. That was the original point to electoral votes and a representative government system. It's not that the system doesn't work, it's been perverted. If we can end the gerrymandering and other political machine issues, we'd have a better system. Not perfect. But I think its steered the wrong way with political affiliation as platform rather than constituent needs.
- khuey 7y ago
  This cuts both ways, why should someone who lives in an area with hardly any immigrants be making policy for people who live in places like LA which are full of them?
  - corodra 7y ago
    Not arguing. I did say vice versa applies to my example. But this is the point to the whole system. It's supposed to attempt to keep everyone's needs in mind. Gov body structures were originally figured out for countries the size of... Florida. Maybe California. Thus, your nation has roughly the same "issues" and "needs". But the USA is the "same" country for 3,000 miles of driving. West and east coast Americans are not the same. New Englanders and Southerners are not the same. West coast and is not the save as Mid-westerners. Hell, even folks on the Pacific Northwest are not the same as Californians. Then you have Texans. Shit, let's not forget Hawaii and Alaskans. Different land. Different climates. WAY different industries and lifestyles. I learned this first hand since I've traveled and lived in different parts of the country every 1-2 years (roughly). So yea. Pretending like axing the electoral college is just a simple fix that solves this super simple problem... you're out of your god damn mind.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  > I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. So ... separate but equal?
nilkn 7y ago
The president is the chief executive of the government, and the government is a union of state governments. The federal government itself was never intended to be all that powerful. Tyranny of the minority is not really a problem in the US because state governments can diverge so much from each other. CA, for instance, is a huge outlier already; there really is no "tyranny" at play here. Residents of CA have a state government presiding over a $2.7 trillion GDP working for them and only them; they also have more representatives than any other state in the country. Arkansas by comparison has a GDP of only ~$118B, and their GDP per capita is half that of CA; they have only 4 representatives. It's hard for me to imagine why CA somehow needs more power than it already has.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  "Our" Federal government is currently imprisoning hundreds or thousands of children in squalid conditions. Some of these children are being held in California. This policy was enacted by a President that lost the popular vote in California, and lost the popular vote nationwide. That is tyranny.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    So if he'd won the popular vote nationwide but lost it in CA you'd be okay with that? Moreover, while detention facilities have become more crowded under Trump, he certainly didn't invent them. The solution here is to understand and address why so many millions of people voted for him, not to give even more power to the most powerful and wealthiest states that hardly need it. One reason Trump managed to drum up so much support is because interior states had been neglected for so many decades. Is neglecting them further your solution? Maybe just completely disenfranchise them on a national level and then you don't have to ever worry about what life is like in most of the country?
    - krapp 7y ago
      >but the solution here is to understand and address why so many millions of people voted for him, Why? They elected Trump to address those concerns. If he can't or won't, the rest of the country is under no obligation to do so on his behalf.
smsm42 7y ago
> we are no longer an actual representative democracy. Claiming that because California has 57 votes and Wyoming a whopping 3 votes, instead of California having 70 and Wyoming one (if at all), we "no longer have representative democracy" is nonsense. California still have wastly more votes. Yes, Wyoming also gets some, otherwise it why bother voting at all if everything is essentially decided by the most populous states anyway? > protection results in a tyranny of the minority 3 votes against 57 is hardly "tyranny". > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? Why people leaving in LAC should be in virtually full control (with the current power of federal government it's very close to that) over people of Nevada and Arkansas and Wyoming? What's the point for Wyoming to sign up for such a deal to be ruled by LAC?
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  > everything is essentially decided by the most populous states anyway? The state isn't voting homogenously. Just like Eastern Washington could vote differently to the Puget Sound with more direct representation. The key word in your argument is 'populous'. Thinking in terms other than people, be it states/counties/acreage is another version of putting "landowners" in charge. > Why people leaving in LAC should be in virtually full control (with the current power of federal government it's very close to that) Which explains why politicians spend so much time in Election season in LAC. Except they don't. They are instead in Ohio, Montana, NH, Wyoming, Iowa, Florida.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    > Thinking in terms other than people, be it states/counties/acreage is another version of putting "landowners" in charge. Again, having 3 votes against 57 does not put whoever has 3 votes "in charge" in any sensible meaning of the word. > Except they don't. Because they think LAC has already made up their minds, no matter what. And judging from voting patterns, they are correct. So whose fault is that? If more LAC voters would vote diversely, politicians would pay more attention to LAC, they are not stupid. But when it's 70+% to one side, why bother? Same campaigning dollar would bring much more impact elsewhere, and campaign resources are finite.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
If you want to look at recent trends, it’s hard to say the electoral college is helping Republicans. A lot of states have only voted in one direction since Bush Sr (the last republican to win CA). If you take those results for granted going forward, a Democrat needs to swing 83 votes to become president, and a Republican needs to swing 173. If Trump hadn’t flipped Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan for the first time since Bush Sr, Democrats would typically only need to swing 44 votes to win. It’s also hard to say this is even problematic in general. The winner of the popular vote has only lost 5 times in history (or 6 depending on who you ask about 1960), and not by large margins either. But you can’t take this to mean that the results would have been different if the election was to be decided by popular vote to begin with. Currently Republican candidates have little incentive to campaign in CA or NY, and Democrat candidates have little incentive to campaign in TX. If the outcome was to be decided by popular vote to begin with, there’s no way to say that the outcomes would have been any different.

zaroth 7y ago

Conversely, there are many issues where California can wag the dog by instituting state-specific policies which effectively drag the whole country with it. Some people like what California does with its state-specific policies. Some people even choose to live there. If the Executive branch was less powerful and the States retained more of what they were originally intended to oversee for themselves, I might have less of a problem with California liberals electing the Executive for the whole country. As it is, California has 53 of 435 seats in Congress and 55 electoral votes. The disparity with Wyoming is just because the minimum is 3 per state, and Wyoming’s population is minuscule. If you eliminate the per-state minimum I expect there would be large geographical areas of the country which would eventually become uninhabitable / unsustainable.

pfisch 7y ago
Because of the EC I would argue that in most states, including California, your vote effectively doesn't matter at all. Unless you are in a purple state you basically don't have a vote, and politicians can ignore your entire State. So while the EC does empower some rural voters, in reality it effectively disenfranchises most of the country.
- zaroth 7y ago
  But this proves the point. The issue you are having at the state level is a dominant majority makes the views of the minority irrelevant. And to be clear, the EC does not disenfranchise all the voters in states like CA, just the minority voters. This is actually precisely what the Senate and the Electoral College is designed to mitigate.
  - chillwaves 7y ago
    it invalidates all voters. Overvotes are a thing. You can have 90% of CA vote against a candidate and it won't mean anything more than 51% voting against. So roughly half of the votes in all non competitive states do not count.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Exactly. I live in NYC. I still vote, but really it doesn't matter whom I vote for since there's an approximately 100% chance of New York's electoral votes going to the Democratic candidate. On the other hand, Kansas hasn't voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson; I'm sure people there don't feel particularly enfranchised either.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  That's not an argument against the Electoral College per se, but rather an argument against letting states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote.

Mirioron 7y ago

If rural issues aren't handled then you'll have even more urbanization and even more expensive housing. The odds are already attacked against rural life. >Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? So instead you want even more people from Nevada and Arkansas to move to LAC, because that's where politicians will pay attention?

tempestn 7y ago
That doesn't seem any more likely to me than Californians moving to Wyoming to make their vote count today.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  The difference is that while the vote of each Californian might have less impact on the outcome of elections, there are so many of them that the problems that California has to deal with become important enough that politicians won't ignore them. If you make the situation work the other way around, then Wyoming's problems become even less important than they are right now and you can pretty much just ignore them and campaign in a certain county instead. If you don't handle people's problems then that makes them more likely to move, to seek a better future elsewhere.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    Thanks for the thoughtful response. I can see how people would feel that way. Can also understand how people on the other side are frustrated when a minority of the population has disproportionate power though. So as with most things it sounds like there's no easy/perfect solution.

theli0nheart 7y ago

> There are only eight states in America that have more people than Los Angeles county.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? Why would Arkansas or Nevada have joined a union of states where their votes mean essentially nothing?

cj 7y ago
That logic doesn't work. It can be applied in reverse to invalidate your point: Why would California have joined a union of states where their votes mean 1/4 of Wyoming's?
- theli0nheart 7y ago
  Sure, California's votes may mean less on a per capita basis, but if you're asserting that California is under-represented compared to Wyoming on a national basis, you're going to have to give some supporting evidence there. That's a pretty wild claim.
  - cj 7y ago
    > supporting evidence Read higher up in the thread: > For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1]
d1zzy 7y ago
To get the benefits that you would get from such a union (whether they see those as benefits is up to them): * access to single market and currency * federal loans/money * territory protection from other countries military intervention * freedom of movement (including study, work, living, etc) within all the other states of the union If states want to do some things differently that's why there are state level laws. If those states don't find that they have the right amount of freedom at the state level and think those benefits above matter less than being able to outvote 3:1 a citizen in California when it comes to presidential election then, I guess, they are free to leave the union?

pdonis 7y ago

> "Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in a tyranny of the minority. "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs? I understand rare emergencies like natural disasters require pooling national resources, but everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to day without Federal benefits.

_vertigo 7y ago
> "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. The point they're making is that while it was designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority, it goes too far and results in a tyranny of the minority. > Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs? I understand rare emergencies like natural disasters require pooling national resources, but everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to day without Federal benefits. No one mentioned federal benefits. We are talking about the relative voting power of a voter in one area versus another in the presidential election. Let's not get distracted here.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > No one mentioned federal benefits. Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care? In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd. The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy. It's not to address the individual concerns of every voter or the local concerns of every city, county, etc. Similar remarks apply to the Federal government more generally. The fact that everyone takes it for granted now that the Federal government is supposed to address everyone's concerns is a sign of how corrupt and inefficient our system has become. Everyone judges their Senators and Representatives, not according to how well they take care of national issues, but how much pork they send home.

mc32 7y ago

This is somewhat balanced by representation in the other house of Congress. It’s not only the US which has to balance rural vs urban electorates. Some are even further down the spectrum like Japan where rural areas have even larger influence than cities compared to other democracies. But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency.

munk-a 7y ago
> But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency. This argument would be accurate if we lived in a mercantile oriented world still, but there are plenty of countries that are entirely on other countries for basic necessities. While I can sympathize with the fact that farmers have gotten the rough end of the stick from seed corporations (like Monsanto) lately and that they have been forced into incredibly thin profit margins their work isn't inherently more valuable because it results in edible objects. There are plenty of countries out there with a net import of food like the UAE, Germany, Russian, Japan, Egypt and Venezuela - that's a pretty diverse group of varying GDP per capita and political stability so I think it's pretty safe to dismiss any concerns of a strategic food reserve.
factotvm 7y ago
You imply people in the countryside own the means of producing food, but the consolidation of agriculture tells a different story.
illvm 7y ago
It would be somewhat balanced if there wasn't a cap on the number of representatives and there was 1 rep per N population. But that's not the case. So even in the House there is an imbalance.
pfdietz 7y ago
That would be a valid concern if food weren't so ridiculously easy to grow. The entire agricultural segment of the US economy is less than 1% of GDP.

sgregnt 7y ago

So why not let the red states quit? And resolve the union? Los angeles county can then do whatever they want.

corodra 7y ago

To your arguement about why do LA residents count less. I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. Do you want someone who has never farmed in their lives. Probably never even picked up a shovel, have a say in the rules and regs about agriculture throughout the midwest? Same goes vice versa. Country folk who hate living in concrete jungles shouldn't make rules for city dwellers. Thus an equal vote, isn't equal. Because my one vote for some other industry I don't know isn't fair for someone who lives it. That was the original point to electoral votes and a representative government system. It's not that the system doesn't work, it's been perverted. If we can end the gerrymandering and other political machine issues, we'd have a better system. Not perfect. But I think its steered the wrong way with political affiliation as platform rather than constituent needs.

khuey 7y ago
This cuts both ways, why should someone who lives in an area with hardly any immigrants be making policy for people who live in places like LA which are full of them?
- corodra 7y ago
  Not arguing. I did say vice versa applies to my example. But this is the point to the whole system. It's supposed to attempt to keep everyone's needs in mind. Gov body structures were originally figured out for countries the size of... Florida. Maybe California. Thus, your nation has roughly the same "issues" and "needs". But the USA is the "same" country for 3,000 miles of driving. West and east coast Americans are not the same. New Englanders and Southerners are not the same. West coast and is not the save as Mid-westerners. Hell, even folks on the Pacific Northwest are not the same as Californians. Then you have Texans. Shit, let's not forget Hawaii and Alaskans. Different land. Different climates. WAY different industries and lifestyles. I learned this first hand since I've traveled and lived in different parts of the country every 1-2 years (roughly). So yea. Pretending like axing the electoral college is just a simple fix that solves this super simple problem... you're out of your god damn mind.
thomascgalvin 7y ago
> I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. So ... separate but equal?

nilkn 7y ago

The president is the chief executive of the government, and the government is a union of state governments. The federal government itself was never intended to be all that powerful. Tyranny of the minority is not really a problem in the US because state governments can diverge so much from each other. CA, for instance, is a huge outlier already; there really is no "tyranny" at play here. Residents of CA have a state government presiding over a $2.7 trillion GDP working for them and only them; they also have more representatives than any other state in the country. Arkansas by comparison has a GDP of only ~$118B, and their GDP per capita is half that of CA; they have only 4 representatives. It's hard for me to imagine why CA somehow needs more power than it already has.

thomascgalvin 7y ago
"Our" Federal government is currently imprisoning hundreds or thousands of children in squalid conditions. Some of these children are being held in California. This policy was enacted by a President that lost the popular vote in California, and lost the popular vote nationwide. That is tyranny.
- nilkn 7y ago
  So if he'd won the popular vote nationwide but lost it in CA you'd be okay with that? Moreover, while detention facilities have become more crowded under Trump, he certainly didn't invent them. The solution here is to understand and address why so many millions of people voted for him, not to give even more power to the most powerful and wealthiest states that hardly need it. One reason Trump managed to drum up so much support is because interior states had been neglected for so many decades. Is neglecting them further your solution? Maybe just completely disenfranchise them on a national level and then you don't have to ever worry about what life is like in most of the country?
  - krapp 7y ago
    >but the solution here is to understand and address why so many millions of people voted for him, Why? They elected Trump to address those concerns. If he can't or won't, the rest of the country is under no obligation to do so on his behalf.

smsm42 7y ago

> we are no longer an actual representative democracy. Claiming that because California has 57 votes and Wyoming a whopping 3 votes, instead of California having 70 and Wyoming one (if at all), we "no longer have representative democracy" is nonsense. California still have wastly more votes. Yes, Wyoming also gets some, otherwise it why bother voting at all if everything is essentially decided by the most populous states anyway? > protection results in a tyranny of the minority 3 votes against 57 is hardly "tyranny". > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? Why people leaving in LAC should be in virtually full control (with the current power of federal government it's very close to that) over people of Nevada and Arkansas and Wyoming? What's the point for Wyoming to sign up for such a deal to be ruled by LAC?

FireBeyond 7y ago
> everything is essentially decided by the most populous states anyway? The state isn't voting homogenously. Just like Eastern Washington could vote differently to the Puget Sound with more direct representation. The key word in your argument is 'populous'. Thinking in terms other than people, be it states/counties/acreage is another version of putting "landowners" in charge. > Why people leaving in LAC should be in virtually full control (with the current power of federal government it's very close to that) Which explains why politicians spend so much time in Election season in LAC. Except they don't. They are instead in Ohio, Montana, NH, Wyoming, Iowa, Florida.
- smsm42 7y ago
  > Thinking in terms other than people, be it states/counties/acreage is another version of putting "landowners" in charge. Again, having 3 votes against 57 does not put whoever has 3 votes "in charge" in any sensible meaning of the word. > Except they don't. Because they think LAC has already made up their minds, no matter what. And judging from voting patterns, they are correct. So whose fault is that? If more LAC voters would vote diversely, politicians would pay more attention to LAC, they are not stupid. But when it's 70+% to one side, why bother? Same campaigning dollar would bring much more impact elsewhere, and campaign resources are finite.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

If you want to look at recent trends, it’s hard to say the electoral college is helping Republicans. A lot of states have only voted in one direction since Bush Sr (the last republican to win CA). If you take those results for granted going forward, a Democrat needs to swing 83 votes to become president, and a Republican needs to swing 173. If Trump hadn’t flipped Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan for the first time since Bush Sr, Democrats would typically only need to swing 44 votes to win. It’s also hard to say this is even problematic in general. The winner of the popular vote has only lost 5 times in history (or 6 depending on who you ask about 1960), and not by large margins either. But you can’t take this to mean that the results would have been different if the election was to be decided by popular vote to begin with. Currently Republican candidates have little incentive to campaign in CA or NY, and Democrat candidates have little incentive to campaign in TX. If the outcome was to be decided by popular vote to begin with, there’s no way to say that the outcomes would have been any different.