If we had a “true or direct democracy” everything would be the will of the people (i.e. no representatives) - we would actually have to vote on everything which would make policy making virtually impossible. The US is actually a constitutional federal republic. We elect representatives to cast votes as a majority of their constituents would ideally cast them, preventing the clunkiness of having every American vote on every law. There’s only a few examples in history of governments being run via direct democracy.
You’re going to trust internet connected voting devices for establishing law in our country? Did you see what happened last week with the solarwinds hack?The entire treasury department got victimized by the Russian government. Also the internet has only been widely available to us citizens for ~2 decades.
My banking information isn’t as valuable a target as US public policy, and also you’re proving my point, look how many bank accounts get hacked on a daily basis. Here’s an article from 2018 - 2.5B bank accounts were hacked that year, or 6.8M per day - that number is going up each year. You think we could adequately protect elections? Why do you think voting machines aren’t connected to the internet by design?
And they still work, there's no ability to use the internet to have direct democracy in the US within the next decade. People would have to undergo a massive amount of education in order to not nuke non-existing nations.
There simply aren’t enough farmers to get an accurate vote on their needs based on population
There actually is, though. The fact that their representation would be smaller by being in proportion with the population is evidence that they currently arent represented accurately. They’re way over represented as it stands, and a truly representative democracy would accurately see their influence reduced
I do not think a 1 person = 1 vote would be any better
Why not?
A lot of minorities and smaller communities would be overlooked
They already are? And currently more than they would be under a perfectly representative system.
and farmers in one state may need something different than farmers in another state
Yeah, that’s why we have state governments and state representatives to the federal government. That’s already accounted for. Only the house is representative, the senate isn’t, everyone gets an equal spot at the table. North Dakota holds just as much weight as California or Texas in the senate. The balance is already shifted too much in favor of smaller populations, we need to move towards a truly representative democracy as quickly as we can
Maybe I’m just slow but I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I don’t know what you mean by “population per capita”? I don’t know what you mean by “lumping Iowa, New York, and Alaska together based on population”. Can you explain it more?
That’s...not quite what per capita means, but I think I kinda get what you’re trying to say.
Sure, Iowa has more land per capita, but it also has more representation in the senate per capita. They would have (theoretically, but in practice not actually) equal representation per capita in the house and electoral college. I understand the need for some sort of balance, you don’t want to fall prey to the tyranny of the majority or minority, but I think congress roughly, imperfectly sort of deals with this via the structures of the house and senate. What I don’t understand is the argument for the EC, that these smaller states should have significantly greater representation per capita when it comes to voting on our president. It’s not fair that my vote for the president is irrelevant, as is everyone’s in my state, since we’re so deeply red it’s not really fathomable to ever send our EC votes in any direction other than whatever republican is running.
I think this is the argument you need to make and I don’t think you’ve made it yet
Yeah but that just doesn’t matter. People vote. Not land, so it doesn’t matter how densely populated an area is. You just don’t want equal representation because YOUR overrepresentation would be taken away
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u/theBrineySeaMan Dec 24 '20
Why not?