Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy

[Dill]

(10-19-2017, 12:55 AM)hollodero Wrote: I get the first part, albeit thinking that's not an ideal model, but that's argueable for sure. But why would the states be erased if I abandoned the electoral college. If the popular vote would decide presidential elections, no states would be erased, I fail to see that and even fail to see why the principle you describe would be endangered. Now with House or Senate elections, that's something different and I am not proposing counting all votes across state lines there. But with a presidential election, sure, every vote should count equally (at least I think that's a reasonable way to look at every person's right to vote) from whomever living wherever, and using the electoral college does not quite enforce that. Now on a partisan level I might understand why a conservative voter would want to keep the electoral college, and fair enough, but it isn't a necessity to ensure American federalism.


Oh but it's easy, I don't take a very sophisticated approach here. When a Californian seat takes more than three times as large an electorate as a Wyoming one, Wyoming is overrepresented. That's the whole premise. Now OK, you say they only have one seat, that's hard to reduce, I get that. But there is overrepresentation compared to California. And the opinions that are to a degree protected with overrepresentation is, of course, whatever opinions people in those overrepresented states hold. Up to the point where "they" (meaning the overrepresented citizens in the House) could be in a minority in total supporters and still get their way/their results/their majority of Congressmen or however you want to measure it. That's just a logical conclusion to me. I didn't quite specify what these opinions could be, as it seemed unnecessary to get my point.

What did JustWin say? Cities are far bigger echo chambers... and I think it's not far fetched to spin that thought to an "there needs to be a safeguard against the big numbers of voters in said echo chambers, hence underrepresenting those votes a little is good and necessary". But sure, that was just the way I read it.

I did not advocate an attack on your states rights, your federalism or checks and balances, I understand the senate and why this overrepresentation of smaller states is part of an unity like the USA and all that. I just babble about the equality of individual votes and how I think that's desirable. Then again, Puerto Ricans are US citizens with no vote at all, so maybe the US just isn't a stickler for details there.

I think the electoral college is out of balance, but that could be corrected by adding a few electors to California and Texas. I am for exploring the idea of splitting the electoral college votes to reflect party line voting in the state rather than "winner take all."

But I still don't like the ideal of the big bowl. It erases the states because suddenly their territory and resources become subject to greater federal control. You are thinking one man one vote; I am thinking of Californians and Texans choosing an exec who might open Montana to unrestricted mining and forestry.  People who don't live there get to run the place. So the presidential vote is about territory, in this case, more than "opinions" right and left. Who controls the territory you live on? You and other people who live on it--or Texas corporate locusts who are eating up their own resources as fast as they can and looking to crack open states who have protected theirs.

Maybe you are right about Justwin and I am reading him through my own "filter." In the past I have often noted the qualitative difference between different mediascapes, the right wing media being an echo chamber of disinformation and a prime culprit in the dysfunction of our politics. H has previously expressed irritation with these claims, so I thought he was just equalizing the field now by suggesting the MSM was an echo chamber too, just bigger. I did not take him to be arguing that the electoral college, etc. are meant to equalize "opinions" between the smaller and the larger  echo chambers. I thought he was just speculating on why US political values take the particular urban/rural distribution that they do.