Many of us are worried about losing our democracy. We are of course not a pure democracy, but a republic, if we can keep it. We don’t vote on every little thing, like a Kibbutz, or village town-meeting. Actually, even those micro democracies follow the republican model, voting on who will make minor decisions until the next meeting. We have been working on building a “More perfect union” for 234 years. Most of the progress towards the goals “Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility “… “promote the general welfare,” has occurred since 1932. Look it up, or read my book.
The essence of a republic is that the people choose the decision makers in an orderly system. Unfortunately, the system has become less orderly, a single party with a narrow ethic has accumulated a disproportionate amount of power. They plan to gain control of the presidency shortly as well as both houses of Congress and have already taken control of the Supreme Court. This leaves us very close to having a one-party government like the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, China, and Iran. They even have a plan to take complete control: Project 2025 a conservative (plutocrats’) manifesto. Mein Kapital?
The Federalist Papers expressed fear of this sort of faction in 1789. Project 2025 would summarily abolish at least 32 government functions like the weather service, civil service, the Federal Reserve, and Department of Commerce. A plan to recreate the U.S. of 1925 when half the government employees were mail carriers, the stock market was sky high, about to crash and cause the great depression. The big emphasis is tax cuts for those who don’t really need them.
One party government works a lot like colonialism, where the locals think they have a government, but only at the pleasure of the singular power that can overrule any local decision, like a monarch.
One of our parties is very organized and good at manipulating politics. That’s why we have two Dakotas with a combined population of less than two million, comparable to Brooklyn, N.Y. The rural New Mexico Territory had a population of less that 200,000. It was divided into two states. The larger half, called Arizona, has grown substantially but still has fewer people than New York City.
Los Angeles County has more people than 45 of the individual states do, and more than 37 small states combined. Nine million people choose 74 of 100 senators, 320 million chose the other 26. California with 40 million has the same representation in the Senate as Wyoming with under a million. Why couldn’t LA, Cook or some other large counties be states?
The Electoral College was a brilliant compromise in 1787, when the small states were worried about the tyranny of a majority and the ratio of state sizes was only 8 to 1. All 13 would have fit in Alaska, which like Wyoming has one Representative and two Senators. The states were far more similar then. Most people were farmers. Industrialization had barely begun and slavery had been culturally normal for 6,000 years. Only Pennsylvania had yet considered abolition.
Many call to abandon the Electoral College. Unfortunately that would require an amendment to the Constitution which is unlikely to get the votes of the 37 states with small populations. No one cedes power.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Whether this can work depends on the question of constitutionality. And the possible long-range repercussions. Unfortunately, it would come before the current “conservative” court.
Ranked choice voting would give the election to the candidate with the widest appeal. This does not appear to have a constitutional issue as the Constitution leaves the method of holding elections to the states. It’s not likely to be implemented in those states with the disproportionate power that they might lose.
More nations lose their freedom from internal faction, particularly cults of personality, than from invasion.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com