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you can't say "figure it out democratically" with the Senate and electoral college saying "its the other branches problem" doesn't work either as SCOTUS is app

• mc32 4y ago
  How is the presidency and senate undemocratic? If they are, it would be through the lens of direct democracy and I'm not sure direct democracy would result in significantly different politics.
  • jandrese 4y ago
    The issue the GP is referring to is how the way our electoral process is set up people with more land have more voice in government. In effect, if you are rural your vote is worth more. This is an extreme in the Senate where a single person's vote has 1.5% of the power of a person in a different state (California vs. Wyoming). And why do we give more voice to the rural vote? Sure they would be a minority otherwise, but so are left handed people and we don't give them more vote. Are they better informed politically than people who live in more densely populated areas? It doesn't really make much sense and I've never heard a argument stronger than "but then the cities would have a lot of political power" without explaining why that is a bad thing.
    • mc32 4y ago
      The electoral college has very seldom deviated from the popular vote. It's happened a handful of times, but not frequently. My point is that people who clamor "popular vote" don't always take into consideration what would happen if we implemented popular democracy. Interestingly, Japan is another country that gives the countryside political advantage and tax advantage.
      • colinmhayes 4y ago
        It's happened 2/6 times this century. That doesn't strike me as very seldom.
        • wilsonnb3 4y ago
          Historically it is very seldom. We obviously will need more time to see if this 2/6 is a pattern or an aberration.
          • DFHippie 4y ago
            This was just limiting it to this century, though. The pattern is well established and well understood. It isn't even very complicated. Each state has 2 senators and at least one representative. The number of electoral votes of a state is the number of senators plus the number of representatives. So a state like mine, Vermont, has three electoral votes even though we have only about 500,000 citizens. If population size were uncorrelated with political leanings, this would just contribute noise to the electoral process, but it doesn't. Less densely populated regions are conservative. The more such regions there are in a state, the lower the population of the state. So in effect conservative voices are given extra weight in elections. If you believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created equal" and whatnot --, this should offend you.
      • jandrese 4y ago
        "Very seldom" including every single Republican Presidential term for the past 30 years save one. Without the electoral college propping them up the modern Republican party would be in serious trouble.
        • anjbe 4y ago
          > "Very seldom" including every single Republican Presidential term for the past 30 years save one. So, twice?
      • dpierce9 4y ago
        Yes just two of the last six elections. This determined 7 of the 9 sitting members of the court.
        • wilsonnb3 4y ago
          The two times that a president has lost the popular vote and won the election in recent history were Bush Jr's first term in 2000 and Trump's term in 2016. Only 3 justices were appointed during those terms, all by Trump in 2017 - 2020. Bush Jr did appoint two justices but they were during his second term, when he won the popular vote. The remaining four justices were appointed by Bush Sr, Clinton, and Obama (2). So I have no idea where you are getting your figure of 7/9 from.
          • dpierce9 4y ago
            So what you are saying is 7/9 justices came from the six elections in this century? Sounds an awful lot like what I said but I guess redundancy is sometimes useful.
      • mcwhy 4y ago
        and Japan's government is equally dysfunctional and influenced by minority fringe groups and religious zealots.
    • splintercell 4y ago
      Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. If Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy. But, one of the best explanations for why founding fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by late Justice Scalia. The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) - House represents the population - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed upon by: a. The will of the people not just in short term (house), but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also. When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that they should have a revote because they didn't believe that people voted with full information. Of course, years later a second proxy vote through general elections made the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill to be passed unless its not just what we voted for in the past 2 years, but also what we voted for in past 4 and 6 years. b. The will of fifty states, and territories and not just by a few populous states. In contrast, EU's policy making is all a decision of France and Germany. EU is more 'democratic' than US, but also far more fragile. American Democratic Republic system is a part of experiment of 'Union of Unions'. It's a balance between the different sides. If you make the union too weak, it will fail to hold itself up. Like Articles of Confederation was a failure because it was too weak, pre-Civil War US also turned out to be a union not strong enough. League of Nations wasn't strong enough. But if you make it too strong, then individual states will start walking out because they don't find their interests represented (like UK voting for Brexit from EU). 1. https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0 https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0
      • mc32 4y ago
        I totally agree with this view and the "problem" is people want their way _NOW_. They don't have the patience nor want to understand that the other side has the political majority at this time. And when the majority becomes a minority opinion, they also cannot handle that change very well. Today's bare-knuckle politics sure does not help moderate the peaks.
    • memling 4y ago
      > And why do we give more voice to the rural vote? Sure they would be a minority otherwise, but so are left handed people and we don't give them more vote. There are other minorities that we think a bit harder about than left handers. Consider, for example, that African Americans are approximately 12% of the US population.[1] They are not, however, evenly distributed around the United States. For example, they make up 33% of the population of Georgia and 22% in North Carolina,[2] states that crack the top 10 in US population.[3] It took a bit of doing, but I weighted the electoral votes for all 50 states and DC (see [2]; you've got to issue your own queries to get them all) according to the percentage of African-American population (AAPC). For example, Alabama has nine electoral votes and an AAPC of 26.8%, which returns 2.412 adjusted votes. In sum, African Americans account for 70.658 total electoral votes, about 13% of the total compared to their population representation of 12%. That step change is an 8% advantage relative to their total population (538*0.12 ~ 65 electoral votes; 1 - 65/71 ~ 8.45%). This is not, I want to point out, an argument about racial inequality or the fitness of the electoral college to deliver solutions to those kinds of problems. Neither is it an exhaustive treatment (obviously) of every kind of demographic. There are obvious flaws in this approach (you can't split EC votes, EC votes are typically winner-take-all, not all of the population are voting age, etc., etc.). So it's also not intended to say, "Well, akshully..." I do think, though, that there is some nuance that is missing here. Rural people aren't the only minority affected by the electoral college, and questions of geography and demography play important roles in how people vote. It's worth considering what happens when you are in the minority, because it is the rights of the minority that are most likely to be overrun by the majority. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#2020_American_Community_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... [2]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/GA,NC/PST045221 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/GA,NC/PST045221 [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population#State_and_territory_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
      • jandrese 4y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is here? You are trying to calculate black voting power without even considering the longstanding and effective black voter suppression efforts in states like Georgia, so it's all academic anyway. Replacing tyranny of the majority with tyranny of the minority isn't a win.
  • ausbah 4y ago
    because the president is elected through the electoral college and the senate gives equal representation to states regardless of population
  • tsimionescu 4y ago
    Senators hold power completely dissproportionate from the population they represent - the senators from Vermont hold the same amount of power as the senators from Texas, while representing orders of magnitude fewer people. The senate is, by design, an inherently anti-democratic institution (it represents the rights of the states instead of the rights of their populations). The presidency I think is at least elected quite democratically, so I'm not sure what GP meant there.
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      The presidency is elected by the electoral college which is made up of one voter from each state for each rep and senator they have. If the senate is undemocratic the electoral college must be too.
      • tsimionescu 4y ago
        There is a difference: electoral votes are bound by law in most states to respect the people's wishes. It gets much messier, and there have been presidents which were elected undemocratically (i.e. without a majority of the US population voting for them), such as Trump. But most presidents have been elected democratically, even though the process doesn't guarantee that.
    • mc32 4y ago
      True but that is why there is a bicameral Congress to try to balance populism vs more restraint. Large vs small. You don't want the largest state(s) trouncing the agendas for all other states and vice versa.
      • ausbah 4y ago
        but its still an undemocratic process
      • tsimionescu 4y ago
        Sure, but that's an inherently undemocratic argument. It doesn't mean it's wrong, it's just against the principle of the people holding the ultimate power.
  • inlined 4y ago
    Direct democracy would have meant one republican presidential term in the last 25 years and the SCOTUS would be highly liberal
    • wilsonnb3 4y ago
      The senate still has to approve SCOTUS nominations. Unless you are getting rid of the senate, too.
  • CuriouslyC 4y ago
    Sure it would. The changed outcomes in 2 recent presidential elections alone would have resulted in a completely different supreme court, which would have changed all of this. If the senate had proportional representation everything Dipshit McConnell hamfisted through wouldn't have happened either, which would also create a very substantially different political landscape.
    • mc32 4y ago
      That presumes candidates would campaign the same way and voters would vote the same way. Look at the way primaries are run. Candidates put extraordinary effort into small states because that's where the party has decided it wants to have its candidates slug it out. They could instead choose larger states but they don't. Or the candidates could campaign in larger states but it would sink their candidacy --they campaign in order to extract maximum value. It's similar with presidential campaigns.
  • stjohnswarts 4y ago
    We have had two presidents in recent history that did not win the popular vote or are you forgetting that?
• dc-programmer 4y ago
  Many of the judges on the bench were literally pushed through undemocratically through the deep state cabal known as the Federalist society. The idea that the US can fix things by just voting better is laughable. Also why is everyone playing “devils advocate” on this thread? It’s clear what the majority sentiment is here, why bother pretending to take a middle of the road “nuanced” position?
  • ausbah 4y ago
    you know some technically minded folk love being "technically correct" on a subject
    • MrMan 4y ago
      they also enjoy demonstrating via such rhetoric that they feel themselves to be untouched by the consequences of such political acts.
  • ttrmw 4y ago
    Steelmanning is probably more helpful than ever on such a provocative topic
• rhino369 4y ago
  While somewhat true at the national level, the issue is actually pushed back to the states. Their legislatures are democratically elected.