Comment by wrycoder
4 years ago
And that’s why the founders set up the electoral college. We are a federal republic of states.
The federal government was supposed to be small, because the founders understood the downside of a large federal government.
> The federal government was supposed to be small, because the founders understood the downside of a large federal government.
Those that want to return to this need to start advocating to abolish freedom of movement and permit states to implement residency requirements to access services. That way State A can go ahead an implement locally the "large federal government" services like Medicare or Social Security, while State Z can choose not to. At the moment our constitutional rights mean State Z residents can freeload by moving to State A. This kind of problem simply wasn't conceivable when the country was founded.
That's why the homeless go to San Francisco or Maine. Better services.
The states are like incubators for different policies. The rest of us watch, and see what does work, and what doesn't work. For all I know, there are residency requirements for services in some places.
One of the things the Constitution protects is freedom of movement.
If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare for All, I think they could just do that.
If you don't like the laws in your state - change them.
If you live in California and you don't like the law in Alabama, what business of yours is that?
Supreme court determined a long time ago that a state cannot implement a residency requirement (e.g. 1 year minimum residency) before accessing that states benefits.
> If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare for All, I think they could just do that.
Yes. But for the problem explained. Also you can throw in issues such as states can't issue their own currencies or treasuries to finance things.
Really the USA is not set up for this kind of "confederation". We are a federation of states that have very limited powers and very stupidly drawn borders. If we want what it sounds like you're after then we need more a European Union style set up. Not separate states. But entirely separate countries. Basically we should decide if we're a country called the USA and are all American's first, or if we're all Kentuckians, Texans, Washingtonians, first and American's second.
This is sort of how it works in Canada; healthcare, disability, welfare and (some) pensions are all managed individually by each province. When you move, you have to jump through hoops to get access to those services in the new province. Still gets funded federally though and how money is transferred between provinces is huge point of contention.
Yeah, I think this is how it works for example in Australia too. You could conceive of this in the US just as easily, for example Medicaid (not Medicare) is a bit like that, run and jointly financed by the state and federal. But again that's "big government" to these states that want to reject healthcare.
What I would bet too is if you go and poll people on whether they like their "big government" program or what to get rid of it, most people would rather keep it, Medicare is big government I don't see seniors wanting rid of it. Social Security is big government. The military, I don't see anyone in these "small government" states saying they want rid of that.
Having a small federal government has no relationship with eliminating the Electoral College.
The "land votes, not people" scheme of the US is a holdover from appeasing wealthy landowners and slavers. We need at least one branch of the federal government that is directly democratic.
The way things are going, an increasingly small minority of extremists will make decisions at the federal level, as we are starting to see now.
The Electoral College is a triviality that we get hung up on because every loser blames it for their loss.
The real undemocratic institution in the US is its most powerful, the US Senate. It should be directly democratic.
> because every loser blames it for their loss
No Republican loser has blamed it for their loss because it hasn't hurt any of them in the modern era. When you get 6 million more votes than your opponent and still lose, that's a subversion of democracy.
I don't see how that's any different than the Senate. With direct democracy, we would've had a more popular president with more popular policies for an additional 8 of the last 22 years.
It is directly democratic. Two senators are elected by the voters of each state. (The Founders preferred that the two senators be elected by the legislatures of each state, but a constitutional amendment changed that.)
We are not one big representative democracy. We are a federation of states. It was not intended that the federal government run everything - it was concerned primarily with defense and relations with other countries. Originally.
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> The Electoral College is a triviality that we get hung up on because every loser blames it for their loss.
No, it's not a triviality, and no, they don't.
There have only been a few superficially EC-caused losses, and it's not at all common for others to be blamed on it, even though the fact of the undemocratic nature of the EC has wide ranging effects shaping elections beyond just the immediately obvious times it produces results at odds with the popular vote at the end, because it creates pressure that acts on all stages of the process, including candidate selection.
> The real undemocratic institution in the US is its most powerful, the US Senate. It
The Presidency is more powerful than the Senate, though slightly less undemocratic. But the undemocratic nature of the Presidency through the EC is directly tied to the even more undemocratic nature of the Senate.
The Senate isn't the most powerful US institution, but it is the most structurally anti-democratic, and through it's structure directly contributes to the undemocratic nature of institutions which depend on it or the allocation of seats to it.
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> The real undemocratic institution in the US is its most powerful, the US Senate. It should be directly democratic.
I'm not qualified to vote on 95% of the stuff Congress has to deal with, so thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Direct democracy is a shitfest for anything much larger than a canton; representative democracy is much better for running large countries with a diverse set of serious matters to address.
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The electoral college is bad for the exact same reason the Senate is bad.
The founders were not that homogenous, and plenty of them wanted to recreate the British government for the new United States.
The founders think they understood the downside of a large federal government.
But I don't like being a federation. Having 50 states each infighting, competing to race to the bottom and attract business from each other, like 50 tiny nations, it's not what I want.
"competing to race to the bottom"
Looking at the US in the last 200 years, it has grown enormously rich, while many ossified systems in the world around it have collapsed. It seems that the competition you dislike does not turn individual Americans into paupers. An average American's living standard is so high that it is actually ecologically unsustainable.
The US was excellent at not being in Europe during WWII, and really great at accumulating a massive negative balance of payments for 40 years after the juice from that ran out.
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This reeks of recency bias: 100 years ago, a british gentleman likely said the same about the superiority of the British Empire as proved by its lasting power - now it's a pale shadow of itself, with Brexit sealing its fate.
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Then set up a Constitutional Convention. People in NH view life differently than those in CA, and don’t appreciate the idea of one way for everyone, as determined by the folk in the large blue cities.
Well, that’s the direction it’s been going for 100 years, so you should be happy
Well your government has reached the point that it cannot govern at the federal level or reasonably receive strong mandates to deal with issues. Faith in democratic institutions is tanking.
This is what it looks like before the system breaks entirely. The buffers can't buffer anymore.
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Actually it was more about making sure slave states were represented. Not as noble of an idea as you're pitching.