Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy

[hollodero]

(10-18-2017, 05:33 PM)Dill Wrote: Well, James Madison begs to differ with you.

That's a bummer.

(10-18-2017, 05:33 PM)Dill Wrote: If you live in Rhode Island then your voice does need protection from populous New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. So yes, you get two senators and New York gets two senators. Without those two senators the role of your state at the federal level is practically nil.  Justwin was correct to insert the state between the federal government here.

I did not read Justwin's "echo chamber" comments as justification for senatorial representation and the electoral college. He was addressing why country folk seem more conservative than city folk, if I understand him.

I did not argue any of that as far asI 'm aware. Of course the senate is disproportionate representation when broken down to cizizen numbers, but you're a federalistic country (as is mine, as little as we are), so I get the principle. There's a senate, a chamber that takes that aspect into account. I did not so much question that as questioning an addtional -additional - need to also imply disproportionate represantation in the other chamber and when it comes to electing a president. To quote Pat's numbers, "California gets 1 electoral vote for every 713,636 citizens. Wyoming gets 1 for every 195,167 citizens". And even though a senate does also exist, it's argued that this is just the way to go to protect a minority against a majority. Which in the end can just as well lead to the minority ruling over the majority, like in a sense it happened when Trump won even though losing the popular vote.

Mind you, I do not say he shouldn't have won and it was unfair and it's not about Trump or anyone else. It's just hard to defend in principle for me, as I think the most democratic way to go would indeed be: Every citizen votes, all votes are collected in one big bowl, and whoever gets most votes win. - There might be good reason to abandon that principle; protecting the political opinions of a minority against a larger population number, however, doesn't seem like one of them.

And this is what JustWin said: "But it's a smaller, less populous echo chamber that has less impact on voting. / And I've worked all over the US, big cities and small cities. Conservative values and politics were not worn on the sleeve in podunk towns....But in the "liberal meccas" the BS can't be avoided." - this very much looks like saying "city votes are more influenced by BS echo chambers and hence it's perfectly fine to let these votes count less". I can be corrected any time though.