Curing Three Failings, All At Once

#313:  Slavery, Native Land, Electoral College

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What if we could take on all three of the above historical legacies?  Aside from addressing historic injustice, it would make for a much fairer political system.

As we all know, rural states are over-represented in the Senate, and in presidential races.  This means a state like Wyoming, with 1/74th the population of California, sends just as many senators to Washington,  And because the presidential election is decided by the Electoral College, this means that that Senate imbalance is compounded further, since each Senate seat is worth one Electoral College vote.

So I've suggested that newly built housing be offered to Native Americans in South Dakota, and Black Americans in Mississippi, to begin to repair the damage of slavery / land grabs that occurred over the course of our country's history.  This would result in Native and Black populations expanding in those states.  The idea would be to make those states 'blue', in effect correcting the rural/Red and urban/Blue balance.  Since Native and Black voters tend to vote Democratic, the gap between the two parties would gradually close.  In South Dakota, the difference is 110,000.  In Mississippi, it's 217,000.

The recent election showed, however, that there's a much lower number that a pilot project could aim for: Alaska's 36,000 vote gap.  Building 50,000 housing units @ $200,000 would be $10 billion.  Offered to Alaskan natives (in-village housing), and Native Americans wanting to relocate to Alaska (retirement communities), the impact on voting could be measured and either expanded (if, let's say, half the difference to becoming 'Blue' had been covered) or declared a success.

If a success, the idea could be implemented in South Dakota and Mississippi.

Let's say that all three states became light Blue.  If you add up all the Red states that are single digits in the Electoral College, and compare their total EC vote to all Blue states in that category, you get a 18/12 split (Nebraska's 4 Red and 1 Blue vote counts as a Red state).  So, changing just three small states from Red to Blue evens things up at 15 each.

Another way to measure 'fairness', is to count all those single digit states' electoral votes, rather than simply counting the number of states.  The result is 99/61 Red/Blue. Subtract AK/SD/MS (3/3/6) and it's 87/73.  About halfway there; a challenge for the future.

A less than perfect way out of our Electoral College imbalance, but perhaps easiest to execute.

My original proposal, from August 1st, 2018, is here.

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Update: 1/27/21

A rather intriguing development: Alaska seems to have passed election reform legislation in 2020 that will see that state's elections run differently.  First, there'll be a unitary, all-party primary.  Then, the general election will see the top-4 candidates in the primary ranked, 1-4 by the voters.  If none of the four receives 50%, the lowest placing candidate's votes are distributed to the #2 choice on ballots in which that candidate was #1.  And so on until a candidate has 50%+1 or more.

What makes this ranked-choice reform interesting is that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called for Trump's removal from office just two days after the January 6th insurrection.  This happened, pundits believe, because Murkowski, who is up for re-election in 2022, knew she would be hard to beat under the new system, and no longer needed to worry about facing a far-right challenger in her 2022 primary.

If this means Murkowski has become something of a free bird, it may be that she could be persuaded to promote our $10 billion plan, above, since it would obviously benefit her state, and mean her legacy for righting America's wrongs would become unshakable.