The following is the first installment in a TPM series, “Not Safe At Home: Solutions For Our Democratic Crisis.” As America battles the coronavirus, this series takes a look at fixes the next Congress and President should consider to how our democracy works — ideas that predate the coronavirus, and that will resurface after it has passed.
Step one should simply be to triple the size of the House of Representatives which can be accomplished by statute. At least get it closer to one person one vote.
The intent of the Electoral College was not just to make the presidential choice a state-by-state matter. It was to be a true “College”, a collection of “wise men” (and women today, of course) who would serve as a last ditch barrier to prevent a totally unqualified demagogue from taking office. Of course, it quickly evolved into a collection of partisan hacks who would always follow the vote in their state, no matter how narrow the margin and how much outside manipulation created it.
So we have an institution whose original purpose included making sure that someone like Donald Trump never took an office higher than dog catcher, being instrumental in his selection. Thus are great Republics overthrown…
Yeah, the irony, ultimately of where the EC started and where it ended up.
It has been said,“What a wise man does first is what a fool does last”.
Guess that makes our current EC fools?
(snip)
What’s clear is that, more than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern whites, the Electoral College continues to do just that. The current system has a distinct, adverse impact on black voters, diluting their political power. Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. Three of those states have not voted for a Democrat in more than four decades. Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged. It’s the precise reason for the success of the southern strategy. It’s precisely how, as Buckley might say, the South has prevailed.
(snip)
Critics of the Electoral College are right to denounce it for handing victory to the loser of the popular vote twice in the past two decades. They are also correct to point out that it distorts our politics, including by encouraging presidential campaigns to concentrate their efforts in [a few states] that are not representative of the country at large. But the disempowerment of black voters needs to be added to that list of concerns, because it is core to what the Electoral College is and what it always has been.
The race-consciousness establishment—and retention—of the Electoral College has supported an entitlement program that our 21st-century democracy cannot justify. If people truly want ours to be a race-blind politics, they can start by plucking that strange, low-hanging fruit from the Constitution.
I remember working out once that to get the ratio of House Members to consitutients back to the typical levels seen in the early-mid 19th century you would have to increase the House by a factor of 10…
That sounds good to me and it would basically forever end the problem of gerrymandering and would likely provide more proportional representation for miniorities,
The “weakness” is in the Senate where is it difficult to come up with any system that does not make states like the Dakotas and Vermont wield power that is out of line with their population,
It makes a mockery of statehood and the constitution to have states with more senate representation than that of the House. And while we are suggesting reforms, do we really need two Dakotas?
This is a species that has been around a long long time…
And is damn well near impossible to eradicate…
Fanning and Johnson?
Jared must be relying on Hannity for the on-the-ground intel
We are doomed…
That’s probably because Trump’s Magic Snake Oil Miracle Cure (“Try it! Whaddaya got to lose?”) is fixing everything else.
Or Carolinas? Or Virginias?
Learning about what was originally envisioned as the function of the EC however makes me wonder how they envisioned things would go after the EC fulfilled that supposed function. That is, if the EC effectively overturned an electoral result through their “wisdom” and fear of having a demagogue elected, what did our clever founding fathers think would happen next? That the majority who voted for the demagogue would just say, "Oh well, we tried ¯\(ツ)/¯ "? If a demagogue is really a demagogue, doesn’t that mean they don’t really care about procedural hindrances to their power?
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) will end up in court and with the current court would end up being invalidated for whatever reason they choose to use. I think it’s great to try but unlikely to succeed in the end.
It is not just the Presidential Elections. If Democrats want to regain control they must make their votes be equal to Republicans at all three levels; Congress, Senate and Presidential. Specially in senate a state like Wyoming has the same voting power as California. This can easily be adjusted by allocating a weight to each senator’s vote in direct relation to their state population (divide that by two between the two senators). Senate is important as this leads to a reform of Judicial Appointments and that needs to be completely redone. There should be an independent commission to check the existing appointments and if they Judge is just a political hack then kick him out. No need to abide by life long appointments as they were made by this current senate setup which is fundamentally undemocratic. Also there should be an independent commission (backed by an independent Judiciary) to decide the congressional districts and their boundaries. Democrats must fight for their existing votes to be counted first by making each of their vote equal to each of Republican votes.
Good morning all:
Tell any Republican that Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections and they will be sure to vote to keep the Electoral College in place.
State legislatures have to vote themselves out of existence, and then Congress has to approve, so that’s a pretty steep climb to merge two states. There has to be compelling economic and/or social reasons to do so since there are certainly no political benefits…
How about a Constitutional Amendment that makes the privilege of being a state contingent on population? Specifically, if a region hasn’t got the population to qualify for X (let’s say X=3) Congress-critters it reverts to Territorial status.
At the same time we can give Territories and Commonwealths the right to voting representation in Congress. Yeah, the bad news is that Delaware becomes a territory. Sorry 'bout that, but it’s a cost of dealing with Senators of Ungulates and Sagebrush like John Thune.