[greendragon]

Tyranny of the majority is a major concern for democratic systems, hence the many protections against it. A system based on pure population majority is no less manipulable, you would end up seeing candidates campaign hard in the ~25 most dense cities and ignore the rest of the country.

[vkou]

That's because tyranny of the minority is typically not a major concern for democratic systems... Except in the United States, because it happens so damn frequently. In no other country does the opinion of ~2% of the population (Swing voters in swing states) take precedence over everything else.

Your response completely ignores, for example, the rural California vote. Those people don't live in dense cities, but their opinions are completely ignored, because they don't live in the right state.

Alternatively, why not double down on avoiding tyranny of the majority? Make a native American's vote count as ten white votes, make an African American's vote count as three white votes... The justification for it is about as good as making a Wisconsin farmer's vote count for that of three California farmers.

[AnimalMuppet]

> In no other country does the opinion of ~2% of the population (Swing voters in swing states) take precedence over everything else.

It doesn't here, either. In order for it to "take precedence", it has to be the swing 2% - the 2% in the middle. That is, if the 98% of the country voted differently, a different swing 2% would be where the election swung.

[oh_sigh]

Except in this case, rural CA voters ultimately got what they wanted, since they on average supported Trump over Hillary.

Also, if we went to a national popular vote, would their concerns be more likely to be heard? Or would the candidates just rally at LA/SD and SF/SV?

[Retric]

First off, most Americans live in city's, but rural voters would still be just as valuable as anyone else. So, the real change is removing extra power from people who only got it from accidents of history. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Second, having rotating senate elections, many votes requiring more than 50% to pass, and lifetime appointments to the supreme court are all designed to hold back a pure majority.

PS: I would suggest national proportional representation to the house, and instant runoff elections for the senate and president, with senate boundary chosen by a fixed public algorithm.