I have thought about this quite a while, which doesn't make it any more or less valid, just the same idea keeps coming around.
I my travels throughout the country over the last 9 nine years I have seen large cities (which are getting generally larger) exercise more political clout than non-urban areas...you know, parts of your state cover the most ground, and are small town, farms, rural...what the media refers to as fly over country. Here in wacky California, the most people live in urban metropolitan areas, and what makes sense there does not necessarily make sense in the rest of the state. Country folk tend to be more conservative, not necessarily repoopicrat, but not into gun control as defined by liberal legislators. Not prone to wanting to legalize dope for taxes, or promote end of life counselling for senior citizens or any of the nonsense coming out of many capitols these days.
Because these large urban areas have more people, they have more votes, hence while territorially someone like Obama lost in California, where the votes were concentrated in the urban areas he won, therefore majority rules and there goes all California's electoral votes to him.
So I was wondering why it an all or nothing deal? Why simple majority rule carries all the votes? Why cant each state allocate the electoral votes by pure per centage of the popular votes?
The other thing I have been thinking about is the same issue from the perspective of one large city dictating the laws for an entire state, like Oregon and Washington.
These states have several cities, but it the largest metro area that dominates statewide politics. In California that power struggle is between the San Francisco Bay area (SF Oakland San Jose) and "The South Land(a.k.a Los Angeles) "
So here is my idea- I think we would be better off if we passed a law that any time the national census determines a Metropolitan Statistical Area exceeds say a million people, it automatically is granted District status, making whatever laws passed in that district binding ONLY on that district. So we could have Portland, District of Oregon or Seattle District of Washington, or Los Angeles, District of California...and the legislatures of each state would then represent only the non district areas of the state...
Think of it...Chicago District of Illinois. I am just saying....
Of course, the obvious faults of this plan are many, especially if the President takes over the census (against the constitution, isn't it?)
Folks in Southern Illinois ( mostly rural ) wouldn't mind if Canada annexed Chicago. Just across the River from St. Louis is St. Clair County IL, which is about 50/50 urban/rural. When I was growing up, it was a battle-ground over Integration and Bussing issues. Schools here are supported by property tax, most of which is payed by rural ( think Republican ) farmers who wanted to maintain their local schools, but most of the schools were in the urban areas ( think Democrat ).
ReplyDeleteIf America could get through several elections where folks could build confidence in the system, you might be able to get some changes made. Until then, people are going to focus on 'playing it by the rules'.
I agree with asking the question why should the majority rule.
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