Okay?

Thanks as I knew it was possible to win the popular vote but lose the college, and happened as recently as 200, my preference would be for presidential elections to be decided on the popular vote which would avoid this effective weighting which I was entirely unaware of. I haven't looked at this in any depth so there are going to be issues I haven't considered.

Intuitively it seems to me that it would be easier to politicise knowledge over IQ testing so I'm interested in what Brian has to say here.

So this all seems correct and my line during this discussion that extensions to suffrage increase the legitimacy of the government, and cases were these extensions to suffrage are diminished such states have been found to breach the Voting Rights Act whether in law or spirit diminish the legitimacy of the political process and thus the government.

I'm interested in the implications of the sentence in bold, I wonder how this increased dissatisfaction manifests, in increased rates of voting which seems unlikely, or a tendency to vote against current incumbents and swing between parties which seems more likely. I think Trump and to a lesser extent Brexit in the UK reflects these dissatisfied citizens rebelling against government albeit from within the process but ultimately to their own detriment. That isn't in my view a reason to weight against because if social stability is the goal it is still preferable to contain rebellions within the democratic process than it is to have them outside of it.

Right. I view this as a basically conservative argument for democracy. On this view, the main purpose of democracy is to channel political unrest that might otherwise manifest in rebellion into a political form that doesn't kill (many) citizens or destroy civic institutions. It does this by providing an opportunity for low-status or out-of-power people who are dissatisfied with the status quo to seek change through non-violent political means.

I think this argument for democracy is potentially in tension with another common one, which views the primary benefit of democracy as its greater success as a decision procedure for picking good leaders. It seems very plausible to me that a system that more successfully picked good leaders might be viewed as less legitimate and so people would be more inclined to gain power through extra-political means. Alternatively, a more democratic system might be viewed as more legitimate, but pick leaders so poorly as to not be worth it.

So the tension is resolved if a system is democratic enough to the achieve the legitimacy required to dissuade most extra political protest and ensure sufficiently good leadership?

I agree these may be* requirements for a successful democracy but I think the primary purpose of democracy is to provide options on how the resources available to a polity are distributed. These distributions are subject to constraint but as everyone within a polity is affected the greater the franchise is extended the greater the legitimacy of the resultant distributions. The reduction in extra political protest is derived from this but it is deciding the distribution rather than reducing protest that is the goal.

I say may be here because I'm not sure I want to consider the US a failed democracy because it has failed to prevent Trump being one of the presidential candidates or because the primary system that resulted in Trump winning the nomination was in part motivated by an attempt to reduce the unrest associated with the Democratic convention in 1968. I think there are failings in US democracy, challenges to the Voting Rights act for instance reduce the legitimacy of the government certainly among those for whom voting is made more difficult.

I'm fine, thanks. Are you OK?

The bit people seem to miss about voting is that it has an impacts on future politics. From the moment an election is over, policies are being formulated and politicians are being favoured to try to win future elections.

The idea it's just about the current election so if if doesn't change that result it's pointless, is fundamentally misguided

No system is perfect. Like the old adage "Democracy is the worst political system ever devised, except all the others."

You can't put a pre-condition (other than citizenship and registration) on voting without corrupting the process.

Back before the Civil Rights Act, in the south you had to pass a "literacy test" to be allowed to vote. That was very effective in making the electorate essentially whites only.

The more you try to engineer the process, the more it becomes about the will of those doing the engineering than the actual will of the people.

Sure, sometimes the people will make suboptimal decisions and elect a bad President, but that's why there's a constitution that limits the power of the office and two other branches of government that, theoretically at least, can work against that Chief Executive and avert disaster.

we're all expecting him to be impeached if elected anyway

By a feckless GOP Congress? Even in the 20% worst Trump presidency outcomes I would put the chances of this happening below 25%.