Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
nasmorn | on: Trump wins presidency for second time
As a foreigner it seems like the electoral college is obviously stupid. No matter who wins why. It is pure conservatism to keep it like doing something because the Bible says so. Given that it mostly helps one party it will never be changed but it cannot be argued from first principles in the 21st century.
Arelius | parent | next
Honest question, Is it not somewhat similar in effect to a parliamentary system? My understanding, is generally a parliament is divided into districts, then after parliament is elected, the government is formed and the prime minister is selected by a majority of the members of parliament?

Not saying it's great, but maybe it's not too dissimilar from some other systems?

Scea91 | parent | next
It can totally be argued from first principles. If you acknowledge that USA is a union and not a single state then it makes sense that the votes do not necessarily reflect the population distribution and there is some form of rebalancing. Then its a wuestion how much and whether the current balance is the right one.
Ancapistani | parent | next
The US is a federal system. It serves the interests of the states, not the People.

The electoral college - and the Senate - were intended to explicitly put power in the hands of the states, as equals, without regard for population. The House of Representatives was intended to be the counterbalancing voice of the People.

I can totally understand disagreeing with the concept, but to say it's stupid tells me you likely don't understand its purpose and how it fits into the overall system.

umanwizard | root | parent
This is circular reasoning -- "the system is the way it is because that's how it was set up".

US States are not meaningful cultural units -- people in Philadelphia are much more like people in NYC than either are like those of the rural hinterlands of their respective states.

> The US is a federal system. It serves the interests of the states, not the People.

Indeed, and that's a bad system that makes no sense in 2024. Disliking it doesn't mean one doesn't understand how it came to be this way.

(Tangentially related aside: plenty of federal systems have much fairer systems for election to federal office than the US does. For example Germany.)

Ancapistani | root | parent
> This is circular reasoning -- "the system is the way it is because that's how it was set up".

Maybe it's my lack of sleep from staying until until 7am watching election news, but I honestly can't see how this is applicable. My comment was explicit about why the system was set up that way.

> US States are not meaningful cultural units

I very strongly disagree.

The next time you meet a Texan, ask them if they think they are "meaningfully" culturally distinct from Californians.

PittleyDunkin | root | parent | next
> The next time you meet a Texan, ask them if they think they are "meaningfully" culturally distinct from Californians.

Having lived in both places I can confidently say "not as much as either party would like to think". There are far, far, far more similarities than differences, especially because the population of either place doesn't tend to interact with their natural environment. Both simply have strong sense of nationalistic pride (however dumb this is).

umanwizard | root | parent
> The next time you meet a Texan

Texas is a cherry-picked example of one of the states with the strongest specific identities. Most states are not like this.

Ask someone from Phoenix to explain how they are meaningfully different from someone from Denver and they will struggle.

loading story #42069680
0xBDB | parent | next
I mean, I'll take a stab at it... the electoral college can be argued from first principles if you consider that the U.S. was supposed to be a federal union of sovereign states. There are certainly reasonable arguments for federalism and devolution of power.

The U.N. doesn't directly elect the general secretary.

umanwizard | root | parent
The US is not, in practice, a union of sovereign states today, regardless of whether it was in 1789.
0xBDB | root | parent
Is that an argument against the electoral college, or an argument for re-devolution of power? Because the latter is probably easier to do than getting rid of the electoral college, given the requirements to pass a constitutional amendment.
ubermonkey | parent
It exists to give outsized influence to small, rural (and, at the time, slave-holding) states -- which is also true of the Senate.