Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.comThat is a hell of a lot of red. And the county by county map makes the country look even more red. Now some analysts have attempted to mitigate the geographic and demographic disparities by weighting the map by population density but that is not the world we live in. There doesn't seem to be any fair way to keep this system. It is a mess, the constitutional equivalent of rotten boroughs. And the rotten parts only swing one way, and will probably never change. This has huge consequences for our federal government, for the presidency as well as congress. For a moment, let's step out of time and political realities to explore a different idea.
Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton may be viewed as an historical outlier in a hundred years, similar to the way we view (if at all) the corrupt bargain that put Rutherford B. Hayes into the White House in 1876. But the pattern held more or less intact, the coasts voted for the Democrat, the middle voted for the Republican. That vast swath of statistically empty plains and mountains from the Mississippi River through the Rockies holds disproportionate power over the rest of the country. Most of the USA is urban, or at least clustered around large Metropolitan centers, But a know-nothing jerk in rural Wyoming has a lot more power in his vote than a highly educated cosmopolitan professional in New Jersey. Why is this tolerable?
It isn't. It is not just, it is not fair, it is not equitable. Nor is it sustainable. In my hometown, fully half of my high school graduating class does not live in the city anymore. First they went away to college, then got a job somewhere else. It is this way in small towns across the country but the direction is almost always one way, from the so-called "heartland" to the big cities and the coasts. The dregs that are left, or "stuck" there, develop the bitter pride of misplaced loyalty and only one side speaks to them. These towns slowly die by demographic withering, or quickly when a factory closes but the result is the same,
It is almost cliche at this point to note that the large blue states subsidize the red states through federal taxation and spending priorities. But it is also true that the roughly 750,000 residents of North Dakota are paying disproportionately to support a state government; the same holds for Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and many other states that have small populations and large land areas. Now, in the age of air travel and other fast transportation, cyberspace and instant telecommunications is there a real need for each of these lightly populated states to each have a governor, legislature, supreme court and possibly under-worked civil servants? If the mayor of New York City can govern nearly 8.5 million people, many with far greater needs than the denizens of the Great Plains, why can't we combine some of these states?
According to the census bureau, congressional seats are not simply apportioned by dividing the total population by 435, there is a formula they use starting with the 51st seat. Each state automatically gets one member of Congress even if, as mentioned for the small states, they fail to meet a numerical threshold for one. Likewise, each state automatically gets two US Senate seats no matter how big they are. This had some merit when the Constitution was written and the total population, area, and number of states was still very small compared to today. It also had merit in that formal ideologies were not as calcified, regional identities were stronger, and the party system was kept in flux by expansion. Today, those are basically settled. You have rural vs city, country vs. urban, and yes the almost entirely white countryside vs the diverse metropolitan centers. We call the battle lines "liberal vs. conservative", or "Democrat vs. Republican" but these are practically two separate nations that will never mix on their own nor coalesce into an arrangement that both can live with.
In the national interest therefore, I propose to combine these Western States into larger ones that will remain contiguous but spread the cost of government over a larger population and reduce their national voting strength. No more North and South Dakota, and throw in Nebraska. Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming can get along just fine with one governor and one main University football team. Utah and Arizona? Kansas and Oklahoma? Why not? We could even combine Colorado and New Mexico just to be less partisan. Small cities are annexed by big ones on occasion, this wouldn't really be different. One governor and legislature in a big area to create uniform laws and enforcement, economies of scale for departments of justice and elections, a larger tax base to more equitably fund schools and on a more uniform basis. There are great possibilities here, beyond just diluting the irresponsible voting habits of country folk.
It would be a little less embarrassing to have a powerful Senate committee chair who is returned to Washington each time by fewer votes than that of a city with an NFL team. And fewer electors for president who represent demographically tiny areas. And there's no reason to stop with the Great Plains/Rocky Mountains, Mississippi and Alabama could combine to make an unassailable bottom of the barrel state in every social indicator. How about Rhode Island and Connecticut? Those religious differences are long past in jolly New England right?
State lines were often drawn arbitrarily through time, treaty, and geography but what do those things have in common with the Twenty First Century? And just think how much money lobbyists would save only having to enrich and corrupt two Senators instead of six? This is win-win all around baby!
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