Oddbean

The press, social media vibe, and energy has shifted from Trump to Harris, but the polling shows that if the election were held today, Trump would win the electoral college by a landslide and lose the popular vote. If this holds, it would mean that in 2000, 2016, and 2024 the Republicans won the election despite losing the popular vote. Only one time the Republicans win the election AND a majority of the votes this century, 2004. What amazes me is how this dynamic is just accepted. This is not a well functioning democracy. https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states

Other than the-powers-that-be who are working on her coronation, does anyone actually want Harris? Some people do seem to actually like Trump. Also, while I largely agree with your point, I definitely do remember lots of conversations following each of the previously mentioned elections about how unfair it was and how outdated the electoral system is.

The TxtMob app we made which was one of the prototypes that lead to twitter was created with the GOAL of stopping W from getting re-elected… It didn’t work but we did learn how to send text messages. https://commonplace.knowledgefutures.org/pub/zw0ja7r2/release/6

Still reading (third way through) but I was thinking about this earlier today, the difference between freedom of speech vs the protection of activism. There is this fine line and definitely social context is at play when it comes to the protocol and the needs. After watching the debate of deleting notes and why it should or should not happen. I don't think people understand how important it is to protect the people saying the words or self-sovereignty. You forcing me to stay in "your system" is kind of the same as what these mega platforms do. No? I think having something like TxtMob - in a sense - as a feature of Nostr is ideal for spreading something important that is needed to be said, but also have the features where a person can protect themselves. I understand Nos is doing this, so I am not including your client in this, but this is what I am curious about. You want to say whatever you want to say, fine. Free speech, but you also should understand we are not all comfortable expressing something that may end up hurting us. Also I know this is not really relevant to this discussion, but it's in my head and this article reminded me of this thought I had at work earlier today. This also may be ramblings because I am tired. Is free speech to some on nostr, just that, free speech. They just want to say whatever. Or is free speech about bringing the truth to the front? You know, anyways, thank you for the article, i will read more later. I enjoyed it so far.

> 51% shitting on the 49% ... is a big improvement on 1% shitting on the 99%. > Tyranny of the majority ... is not great, but it's much better than tyranny of the minority. Anyway, those who've lived in China (eg me, 2 years near Shanghai) know that majority-rules elections are not the definition of democracy. The CCP use majority-rules elections. That doesn't make China democratic. The real differences between democracy and autocracy are more subtle. They're found in things like freedom of expression and association for citizens. Media freedoms for publishers and telecoms services. Due process under the law, which applies even to people in the highest levels of governance. A permeable border, so people can vote with their feet, rather than being effectively prisoners of the state. A society could lack officials elected by majority vote, but if it had all those, it would be democratic.

The electoral collage was introduced back when they couldn’t get people to care about national elections. Back when local was all that mattered because we had a small federal government the way the founders intended. The issue is that Trump or Kamala even matter that much. We shouldn’t feel their presence in our local areas.

I'm not sure I agree. In Aotearoa, a tiny country where government is fully integrated across the whole country, balancing representation according to the popular vote makes sense. But when electing a head of state in a federal system, where state governance is functionally independent in many ways? Does proportional representation makes sense in such an election? My 2 cents for pro-democracy campaigners in the US is look into Single Transferable Vote systems. For elections at all levels of government, but particularly for Congress and the Presidency. Breaking the centre-right/ hard-right duopoly over electoral politics seems much more urgent than making sure whichever right-wing candidate wins the popular vote gets the President chair.

This, 100%. Without the check of the Electoral College and Senate, there wouldn't BE a United States. Because the smaller states would have "noped out" of joining for fear of populous states ramming through whatever they wanted. Maryland nearly did anyway. Here in Australia, a Senate vote in Tasmania is worth nine Senate votes in NSW. And that's okay. Same reason.

I don't either of these statements are fair comment. One could equally argue that electing Congress or the President by popular vote is to treat the people of the smaller states as less important than the 15 largest states. Which would easily determine the outcomes of those elections, giving a person who moved to one of those largest 15 states far more electoral power than if they moved to one of the smaller ones. But this whole debate misses the point. Regardless of whether the President is elected by popular vote or not, under the current system the Presidency will always be controlled by the Republicrat party, whether its centre-right neoliberal wing, or its hard-right neoconservative wing. Breaking that duopoly is where proportionality matters most in the US system. Replacing FPP (First Past the Post) vote counting with STV is how you do that. So people can vote for a left-wing candidate without splitting the vote and handing the election to the hard right.

... and I ought to add, given the inclinations of many of Nostr, that it would also allow right-leaning libertarians to vote for candidates who actually reflect their views, without handing the election to the authoritarian centre-right (Dems). In either case, STV in local and state elections would diversify representation at those levels of government. Which would likely filter up to Congress and the Presidency, whether STV voting was used at that level or not. Making electoral reform there more likely to happen.