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Which means half the population will cast votes which have less value than those of their fellow citizens, thanks to the Electoral College.

shaftway 7y ago
This is already true, and is not an uncommon situation. This is akin to saying "half the population makes less than the mean income". But this is HN, so let's throw some numbers in to see how badly it's skewed already. The state with the lowest population-to-elector is Wyoming, with about 193,000 people per elector. The state with the highest is Florida with over 740,000 people per elector. So Wyomingans votes for president are over 3.8x more valuable than Floridians. The national average is around 580,000 people per elector, and Louisiana is pretty darn close, so I'm going to omit them from calculations. That leaves about 217,000,000 people in states that are higher (Georgia, California, Iowa, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida), and 106,000,000 people in states that are lower (the others). I'm too lazy to list out common political affiliations, but they're not as clearly biased as you'd expect.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  Also want to add that's still better than the EU's parliament balance between its members; Malta has 81,000 citizens per MEP versus the UK's 925,000 per MEP.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    This is HN, how about presenting an opinion about some preferable alternative? Do you think Malta's number of representatives should be cut to match the UK's, in which case it would have (less than) one member and any minority votes on Malta would be hopelessly lost and ignorable? Do you think the UK (and others) should be boosted to match Malta, in which case the EU parliament would have eleventy thousand representatives? Do you think some other scheme else would be better? We have a similar discrepance in Norway, BTW, where it basically doesn't matter. The least populous region has historically had less that 2% of the population and about 3% of the parliament seats, but the numbers are very small, haven't made a difference, and of course the issue exists precisely because the numbers are so small, so it can never grow to be a big discrepancy.
    - tomatotomato37 7y ago
      If you want alternatives than Wyoming rule Malta; 1 MEP per 475,000. So what if they only get a single minority vote, its the rule of the people, not of the arbitrary administrative districts. The parliament building is already big enough for 750 people, so let the UK have 139 MEPs, their population deserves it.
    - shaftway 7y ago
      I'm not fully aware of the politics involved in this, so there might be some faux pas in here, but could you balance the large states so that there's an even number of votes and then give the micro-states the tie-breaker? I'd assume that in the case of heavily skewed results the micro-states wouldn't matter either way. I suspect it wouldn't matter as much in the cases where the vote was close. But having an actual tie would give them their influence. I mean, I could see it being insulting. And I could see the argument that most of the time their vote doesn't matter, but most of the time most peoples' votes don't matter anyway.
      - Arnt 7y ago
        I think you're looking at the wrong aspect... consider two cases. First, suppose that in Malta, there is a political party that has majority backing, or near-majority. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the big party will win every election in the coming decades, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if we already know the outcome? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Second, suppose that in Malta, there is no political party close to majority backing. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the winning candidate will never have wide popular support, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if no winner will have popular backing? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Sometimes people suggest avoiding the problem by not having such small places. However, Malta does exist. If there were a reform proposing to merge Malta's EU votes with Italy's, the Maltese would look at it and say "WTF? Why should we even hold elections if the representative will always be a party hack from Rome who doesn't even speak our language?" AIUI the common way to solve this is to give really small places about five or six seats, so that winning 20% of the votes is enough. That transforms an existential problem of democracy in the small places into a small skew in the elected body.
JohnFen 7y ago
Only for Presidential elections, which, to be fair, isn't the most important one for the federal government. Congressional elections are more important.
- olliej 7y ago
  And the senate, which is where the skew is much more gratuitous.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Only for Presidential elections, which, to be fair, isn't the most important one for the federal government. Congressional elections are more important. The Presidential election is the single most important election in the US federal system, but in any case, he skew in the electoral college is less than, and mostly a a side effect of, the skew in the upper house of Congress (there is skew of a smaller scale in the lower house do to granularity effects, which also impacts the electoral college, but the skew in the upper house is a much bigger issue.)
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > The Presidential election is the single most important election in the US federal system The Presidential election decides the most important single seat in government. However, Congress is, by design and intention, the more powerful federal body and so congressional elections collectively are more important.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Sure. But, again, the central point is that unequal voting power isn't unique to Presidential elections, indeed, the unequal voting power there is a direct consequences of the unequal voting power in Congress, particularly (but not exclusively) the Senate, which is also house with the most power in restraining the executive (the Senate confirms principal executive officers and judges, ratifies treaties, and adjudicates impeachments of impeachable officers, most relevantly here executive officers.)
deleted 7y ago
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olliej 7y ago
It’s not the electoral college (that’s its own problem). It’s the senate. The senate gives 2 representatives to each state, irrespective of population. It’s essentially already government control by the smallest states - you have tiny states with 2 senators, when Washington DC has none - despite a larger population than a number of states. PR, Guam, and American Samoa have no representation. And the majority of those tiny population states are rural states that consider science to be secondary to whatever the Bible says.

shaftway 7y ago

This is already true, and is not an uncommon situation. This is akin to saying "half the population makes less than the mean income". But this is HN, so let's throw some numbers in to see how badly it's skewed already. The state with the lowest population-to-elector is Wyoming, with about 193,000 people per elector. The state with the highest is Florida with over 740,000 people per elector. So Wyomingans votes for president are over 3.8x more valuable than Floridians. The national average is around 580,000 people per elector, and Louisiana is pretty darn close, so I'm going to omit them from calculations. That leaves about 217,000,000 people in states that are higher (Georgia, California, Iowa, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida), and 106,000,000 people in states that are lower (the others). I'm too lazy to list out common political affiliations, but they're not as clearly biased as you'd expect.

tomatotomato37 7y ago
Also want to add that's still better than the EU's parliament balance between its members; Malta has 81,000 citizens per MEP versus the UK's 925,000 per MEP.
- Arnt 7y ago
  This is HN, how about presenting an opinion about some preferable alternative? Do you think Malta's number of representatives should be cut to match the UK's, in which case it would have (less than) one member and any minority votes on Malta would be hopelessly lost and ignorable? Do you think the UK (and others) should be boosted to match Malta, in which case the EU parliament would have eleventy thousand representatives? Do you think some other scheme else would be better? We have a similar discrepance in Norway, BTW, where it basically doesn't matter. The least populous region has historically had less that 2% of the population and about 3% of the parliament seats, but the numbers are very small, haven't made a difference, and of course the issue exists precisely because the numbers are so small, so it can never grow to be a big discrepancy.
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    If you want alternatives than Wyoming rule Malta; 1 MEP per 475,000. So what if they only get a single minority vote, its the rule of the people, not of the arbitrary administrative districts. The parliament building is already big enough for 750 people, so let the UK have 139 MEPs, their population deserves it.
  - shaftway 7y ago
    I'm not fully aware of the politics involved in this, so there might be some faux pas in here, but could you balance the large states so that there's an even number of votes and then give the micro-states the tie-breaker? I'd assume that in the case of heavily skewed results the micro-states wouldn't matter either way. I suspect it wouldn't matter as much in the cases where the vote was close. But having an actual tie would give them their influence. I mean, I could see it being insulting. And I could see the argument that most of the time their vote doesn't matter, but most of the time most peoples' votes don't matter anyway.
    - Arnt 7y ago
      I think you're looking at the wrong aspect... consider two cases. First, suppose that in Malta, there is a political party that has majority backing, or near-majority. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the big party will win every election in the coming decades, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if we already know the outcome? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Second, suppose that in Malta, there is no political party close to majority backing. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the winning candidate will never have wide popular support, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if no winner will have popular backing? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Sometimes people suggest avoiding the problem by not having such small places. However, Malta does exist. If there were a reform proposing to merge Malta's EU votes with Italy's, the Maltese would look at it and say "WTF? Why should we even hold elections if the representative will always be a party hack from Rome who doesn't even speak our language?" AIUI the common way to solve this is to give really small places about five or six seats, so that winning 20% of the votes is enough. That transforms an existential problem of democracy in the small places into a small skew in the elected body.

JohnFen 7y ago

Only for Presidential elections, which, to be fair, isn't the most important one for the federal government. Congressional elections are more important.

olliej 7y ago
And the senate, which is where the skew is much more gratuitous.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Only for Presidential elections, which, to be fair, isn't the most important one for the federal government. Congressional elections are more important. The Presidential election is the single most important election in the US federal system, but in any case, he skew in the electoral college is less than, and mostly a a side effect of, the skew in the upper house of Congress (there is skew of a smaller scale in the lower house do to granularity effects, which also impacts the electoral college, but the skew in the upper house is a much bigger issue.)
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > The Presidential election is the single most important election in the US federal system The Presidential election decides the most important single seat in government. However, Congress is, by design and intention, the more powerful federal body and so congressional elections collectively are more important.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Sure. But, again, the central point is that unequal voting power isn't unique to Presidential elections, indeed, the unequal voting power there is a direct consequences of the unequal voting power in Congress, particularly (but not exclusively) the Senate, which is also house with the most power in restraining the executive (the Senate confirms principal executive officers and judges, ratifies treaties, and adjudicates impeachments of impeachable officers, most relevantly here executive officers.)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

olliej 7y ago

It’s not the electoral college (that’s its own problem). It’s the senate. The senate gives 2 representatives to each state, irrespective of population. It’s essentially already government control by the smallest states - you have tiny states with 2 senators, when Washington DC has none - despite a larger population than a number of states. PR, Guam, and American Samoa have no representation. And the majority of those tiny population states are rural states that consider science to be secondary to whatever the Bible says.