[rjvir]

Many factors can influence an outcome. But it's reasonable to focus on the illegal (or just shady) ones.

For instance, if a team loses a sporting event by 1 point, and their Gatorade was poisoned, it would be understandable to call out the Gatorade poisoning. Of course, many other things could have swung the outcome as well (random variance, wind, poor effort, etc).

[aylmao]

> Many factors can influence an outcome. But it's reasonable to focus on the illegal (or just shady) ones.

I disagree, let me illustrate with examples. The electoral college is a very legal and established process, but it has costed the US two out of the three latest presidential elections (not counting reelections), where the popular vote hasn't matched the result. As a foreigner it's crazy to think the fate of the country is essentially dependent on some random states.

This also applies to other problems. Climate change— there's scandals like the Volkswagen emissions fiasco, but legal pollution far outweighs any other type of pollution. Drugs— cocaine and heroin are probably a big problem, but cigarettes and opioids cause more net deaths. Etc, etc.

Sketchy issues will make flashier headlines, anger people more, and in general be more straightforward to digest as a problem. It is often the institutionalized factors that have broader impact although unfortunately they will also escape the public eye, precisely because everyone is just "used" to them.

Back to this— if the electoral college didn't exist, the US wouldn't even be having this conversation! Trump did lose the popular vote! All of his tactics, misinformation, fear-mongering, etc. did not work in convincing most people in the US that he was a good option for president. He failed. Yet, it's crazy that that doesn't matter, and he could get the presidency even if he lost.

Isn't it crazy that that hasn't yet been brought up? That we are here, trying to figure out if this micro-targeting could be to blame for influencing 80k people in 3 random states because these crazy rules say these people's vote matters disproportionally more than the majority vote in the country, instead of talking about the fact these are even the rules in the first place?

[jdminhbg]

> Isn't it crazy that that hasn't yet been brought up?

I can guarantee you, as an American, that the topic of the electoral college has in fact been brought up. Many, many, many times. Here is a massive thread on HN within the past week on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20760649

[caseysoftware]

How many/which countries use direct democracy/popular vote at the national level?

vs

How many/which countries use a proxy votes/delegates at the national level that don't necessarily reflect the popular vote?