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> The federal government is worse than useless It's the government that the collective beliefs and cultural assumptions of this country have built. Maybe there

> The federal government is worse than useless It's the government that the collective beliefs and cultural assumptions of this country have built. Maybe there's a cause-effect link in there, somewhere, you would think?

enraged_camel 6y ago
No, the federal government we have is the result of our outdated, quirky and flawed electoral system, where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  I agree that's a major part of the problem.
- pdonis 6y ago
  The system you describe only applies to Presidential elections. The federal government is a lot more than just the President, and so are its problems.
  - not2b 6y ago
    The Senate is also broken (Wyoming with 500k == California with 39M people).
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > The Senate is also broken (Wyoming with 500k == California with 39M people). That's because States are political units, not just arbitrary boundaries. So they also have a voice in the federal government as States. To me, Wyoming being able to not be run roughshod over by California just because California has a lot more people is a feature, not a bug.
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? What they were describing applies to every federally elected position, in different amounts. Whether it's a bug or a feature (as a whole or for each position) is very much up for discussion, but it's orthogonal.
        pdonis 6y ago
        > If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? It does. I didn't mean to imply that what I said didn't also apply to the Electoral College. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
        dllthomas 6y ago
        In that case, I don't think anything really remains of your original comment in this thread? Your follow-ups have blurred the line between factual questions and normative, but in both cases the comment you initially replied to applies at least as much to things other than the presidency. (I'll note that this doesn't mean there weren't interesting points worth discussing that you've been trying to get at, just that you've at least wound up unclear in how you've been expressing them.)
    - lbotos 6y ago
      The Senate is designed to act as a counter balance to the house. The senate with equal representation per state, and the house with population based representation. What do you mean by the Senate is broken?
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        It's not doing what not2b wants. It's working as designed, but that seems to be irrelevant to not2b.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Also applies to senators, and to a small extent house of representatives.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > Also applies to senators There is no Electoral College for senators; they are elected by direct popular vote. > and to a small extent house of representatives Same comment.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >> Also applies to senators > There is no Electoral College for senators; they are elected by direct popular vote. That's irrelevant. The parent commenters says: >where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others. How can you argue that this isn't the case when wyoming gets the same amount of senate votes as california?
        pdonis 6y ago
        See my response to not2b downthread.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    No, the votes of people in certain states being more valuable than those in others is also true of the House and Senate. In fact, the inequity in voting power produced by the Electoral College is a direct consequence of that in the structure of the House and Senate, since the latter is apportioned simply (except for DC) by adding the apportionment of House and Senate seats.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      It is (mostly) not true of the House. Yes, some states have House seats that represent somewhat fewer people than some other states. I suppose, technically, that means the votes in that state are "more valuable". It's far different from the Senate, though.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > It is (mostly) not true of the House. It's absolutely true of the House, though because of granularity rather than fixed representation, so it's not simply smaller-states-are-overrepresented. (But instead smaller states have the most variable representation.) > Yes, some states have House seats that represent somewhat fewer people than some other states “Somewhat fewer” in the sense that 527,000 (Rhode Island) is “somewhat fewer” than 994,000 (Montana), but, while it's a narrower range than the Senate (65.7:1) or EC (3.59:1), 1.88:1 isn't a close ratio.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      I responded to a similar point by not2b downthread. The following are some additional points I didn't make there. To some extent the inequity you describe can be corrected by forcing particular methods for apportionment that can better prevent gerrymandering, and by increasing the size of the House to reduce the difference between the populations of the least and most populous districts. A certain amount of inequity of this type is, however, unavoidable in any representative democracy. Also, this particular inequity is important to people only to the extent that what the Federal government does directly affects their lives. So an obvious way to reduce the impact of this inequity is to reduce the ways in which the Federal government can affect individual people's lives. The idea that Federal laws and regulations should be able to micromanage so many aspects of everyone's lives would have been horrifying to any of the Founders. Not only that, but it also disempowers people by making them much less aware of everyone's ability to find local solutions to local problems. Another point to make is that the main problem with the Senate and the House has nothing to do with the inequity you describe: it is the simple fact that Congress has very low approval ratings but very high incumbent reelection rates. That means members of Congress are effectively never held accountable for bad policy decisions; they can continue to make them with impunity since they know they are not risking reelection by doing so. (For example, in all the furor over the CDC and FDA bungling COVID-19 testing, nobody to my knowledge has observed that the only reason the FDA had the power to prohibit State and local health authorities from developing their own tests is that Congress gave it that power, and legislation to rethink bad policy decisions like that is not even on the table.) That is not something that can be fixed by adopting a different system for apportionments.
- LanceH 6y ago
  Trump did not lose the popular vote. There is no contest for the popular vote. Perhaps one party should try moving a bit to campaign according to the actual contest at hand, rather than try to rewrite the rules. You assume the Democrats would win a popular vote easily. First, Republicans would actually campaign in California for a change. They might even move left a tad on some issues. Democrats might decide it's the time to go batshit insane and go further left, leaving an even wider, disenfranchised center than we have now.
  - joshstrange 6y ago
    > Trump did not lose the popular vote. Dear god, do facts not matter at all? He absolutely lost the popular vote. He won the election through the electoral college. It's the system we have and it's what determines the election but to say he didn't lost the popular vote is false and revisionist.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      I believe that you are missing LanceH's point. I'll try to put it in different terms. Here's a football game. Team A scores 17 points on 284 yards of offense. Team B scores 10 points but has 317 yards of offense. Team B's fans say "We won on total offense!" That's great, Team B fans. Here, have a lollipop. Why am I being so condescending? Because no football game is decided based on total offense. They're decide on points. Team B "won" something that is a statistical category, not a game. In the same way, Hillary won a statistic, not an election. So all this "Trump lost the popular vote" is... yeah, so what? Winning the popular vote plus six bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks. And Democrats knew what the rules were going into the election, and have known ever since. Who cares about the popular vote? It's totally irrelevant. They. Lost. The. Election.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Trump did not lose the popular vote. I seriously hope you're baiting and don't actually believe that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... Nominee Donald Trump Hillary Clinton [...] Popular vote 62,984,828 65,853,514 secondary source: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2016.pdf#page=10 https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...

enraged_camel 6y ago

No, the federal government we have is the result of our outdated, quirky and flawed electoral system, where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago
I agree that's a major part of the problem.
pdonis 6y ago
The system you describe only applies to Presidential elections. The federal government is a lot more than just the President, and so are its problems.
- not2b 6y ago
  The Senate is also broken (Wyoming with 500k == California with 39M people).
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > The Senate is also broken (Wyoming with 500k == California with 39M people). That's because States are political units, not just arbitrary boundaries. So they also have a voice in the federal government as States. To me, Wyoming being able to not be run roughshod over by California just because California has a lot more people is a feature, not a bug.
    - dllthomas 6y ago
      If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? What they were describing applies to every federally elected position, in different amounts. Whether it's a bug or a feature (as a whole or for each position) is very much up for discussion, but it's orthogonal.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? It does. I didn't mean to imply that what I said didn't also apply to the Electoral College. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
        dllthomas 6y ago
        In that case, I don't think anything really remains of your original comment in this thread? Your follow-ups have blurred the line between factual questions and normative, but in both cases the comment you initially replied to applies at least as much to things other than the presidency. (I'll note that this doesn't mean there weren't interesting points worth discussing that you've been trying to get at, just that you've at least wound up unclear in how you've been expressing them.)
  - lbotos 6y ago
    The Senate is designed to act as a counter balance to the house. The senate with equal representation per state, and the house with population based representation. What do you mean by the Senate is broken?
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      It's not doing what not2b wants. It's working as designed, but that seems to be irrelevant to not2b.
- gruez 6y ago
  Also applies to senators, and to a small extent house of representatives.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > Also applies to senators There is no Electoral College for senators; they are elected by direct popular vote. > and to a small extent house of representatives Same comment.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >> Also applies to senators > There is no Electoral College for senators; they are elected by direct popular vote. That's irrelevant. The parent commenters says: >where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others. How can you argue that this isn't the case when wyoming gets the same amount of senate votes as california?
      - pdonis 6y ago
        See my response to not2b downthread.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  No, the votes of people in certain states being more valuable than those in others is also true of the House and Senate. In fact, the inequity in voting power produced by the Electoral College is a direct consequence of that in the structure of the House and Senate, since the latter is apportioned simply (except for DC) by adding the apportionment of House and Senate seats.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    It is (mostly) not true of the House. Yes, some states have House seats that represent somewhat fewer people than some other states. I suppose, technically, that means the votes in that state are "more valuable". It's far different from the Senate, though.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > It is (mostly) not true of the House. It's absolutely true of the House, though because of granularity rather than fixed representation, so it's not simply smaller-states-are-overrepresented. (But instead smaller states have the most variable representation.) > Yes, some states have House seats that represent somewhat fewer people than some other states “Somewhat fewer” in the sense that 527,000 (Rhode Island) is “somewhat fewer” than 994,000 (Montana), but, while it's a narrower range than the Senate (65.7:1) or EC (3.59:1), 1.88:1 isn't a close ratio.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    I responded to a similar point by not2b downthread. The following are some additional points I didn't make there. To some extent the inequity you describe can be corrected by forcing particular methods for apportionment that can better prevent gerrymandering, and by increasing the size of the House to reduce the difference between the populations of the least and most populous districts. A certain amount of inequity of this type is, however, unavoidable in any representative democracy. Also, this particular inequity is important to people only to the extent that what the Federal government does directly affects their lives. So an obvious way to reduce the impact of this inequity is to reduce the ways in which the Federal government can affect individual people's lives. The idea that Federal laws and regulations should be able to micromanage so many aspects of everyone's lives would have been horrifying to any of the Founders. Not only that, but it also disempowers people by making them much less aware of everyone's ability to find local solutions to local problems. Another point to make is that the main problem with the Senate and the House has nothing to do with the inequity you describe: it is the simple fact that Congress has very low approval ratings but very high incumbent reelection rates. That means members of Congress are effectively never held accountable for bad policy decisions; they can continue to make them with impunity since they know they are not risking reelection by doing so. (For example, in all the furor over the CDC and FDA bungling COVID-19 testing, nobody to my knowledge has observed that the only reason the FDA had the power to prohibit State and local health authorities from developing their own tests is that Congress gave it that power, and legislation to rethink bad policy decisions like that is not even on the table.) That is not something that can be fixed by adopting a different system for apportionments.
LanceH 6y ago
Trump did not lose the popular vote. There is no contest for the popular vote. Perhaps one party should try moving a bit to campaign according to the actual contest at hand, rather than try to rewrite the rules. You assume the Democrats would win a popular vote easily. First, Republicans would actually campaign in California for a change. They might even move left a tad on some issues. Democrats might decide it's the time to go batshit insane and go further left, leaving an even wider, disenfranchised center than we have now.
- joshstrange 6y ago
  > Trump did not lose the popular vote. Dear god, do facts not matter at all? He absolutely lost the popular vote. He won the election through the electoral college. It's the system we have and it's what determines the election but to say he didn't lost the popular vote is false and revisionist.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    I believe that you are missing LanceH's point. I'll try to put it in different terms. Here's a football game. Team A scores 17 points on 284 yards of offense. Team B scores 10 points but has 317 yards of offense. Team B's fans say "We won on total offense!" That's great, Team B fans. Here, have a lollipop. Why am I being so condescending? Because no football game is decided based on total offense. They're decide on points. Team B "won" something that is a statistical category, not a game. In the same way, Hillary won a statistic, not an election. So all this "Trump lost the popular vote" is... yeah, so what? Winning the popular vote plus six bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks. And Democrats knew what the rules were going into the election, and have known ever since. Who cares about the popular vote? It's totally irrelevant. They. Lost. The. Election.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Trump did not lose the popular vote. I seriously hope you're baiting and don't actually believe that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... Nominee Donald Trump Hillary Clinton [...] Popular vote 62,984,828 65,853,514 secondary source: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2016.pdf#page=10 https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...