The Next President Of The United States Is Donald J Trump

[Zkuq]

fatslob-:O said:

Zkuq said:

Good for you if you like Trump. I specifically tried to keep me comment separate from any specific elections (such as this one), and instead talked on a general level. I just don't think the system is very good, no matter who wins.

There's better ways to get around (geographical) tyranny of the majority, if that's what you're worried about. Probably the easiest way is to have votes in different states have different weights, but otherwise have each vote count directly. Weighing states differently seems to essentially be the part of the electoral college that you're defending, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Personally I think tyranny of the majority is a troublematic concept for several reasons, and I don't necessarily think anything should even be tried to be done about it. That said, the above still seems like a valid solution to geographical tyranny of the majority. What we have for parliamentary elections here is pretty close to it, and it's working pretty well, I think. Ironically, it's the power it grants less populated areas that I find problematic about it. It makes getting elected in some election areas much, much more difficult than in others, and even some quite popular politicians have suffered for it, I think (if I recall correctly, the leader of a party didn't get elected because of that 'somewhat recently').

Are you implying that we have electoral votes be split popular vote wise per each state ? It sounds like a good idea at first when you realize 3rd parties are more likely to prevent the leading two parties from reaching 270 electoral votes which would cause us to go in limbo ... 

Tyranny through majority is a very real thing when the entire population cannot be trusted to protect the rights of minorities. There's a reason why the founding fathers created America to be a federal republic and not a pure democracy. While several electoral systems give more power relative to less populated areas I think that is meant to be a defense against the voices of more populated areas so it may be harder to win certain elections but once it happens at least it's justified with some multipartisan support ... 

Yeah, that's sort of what I'm saying. What you're saying is a problem with the current electoral system for sure. It's easily solvable if you just have a second voting round between the two top candidates if no one reaches 270 votes during the first round of voting. That said, I'm not sure if such a change would require changing the constitution, which would be a huge hassle and probably isn't going to happen any time soon. Ideally though, the whole electoral college would be abolished and replaced with a direct voting system where the votes count directly (with the possibility of weighting by state to defend against tyranny of the majority). There's literally no reason to use the electoral college as a defense against tyranny of the majority when there's a better system.

Yeah, like I said, tyranny of the majority is a troublesome concept, and you make good points. I agree that such tyranny is not good, but it can also be really difficult to draw the line between tyranny and democracy with regard to tyranny of the majority. Even weighting by state helps only with geographical tyranny of the majority, but what about other forms? It's a tricky issue (we wouldn't be having this debate if it wasn't), and that's why I'm not completely opposed to weighting votes by state or something else sensible.