It wasn't all that long ago, in historical terms, that thirteen sparsely-populated and newly independent states huddled along the north Atlantic shore of North America. They were all governed in the British traditions, having long been -- proudly, for the most part -- British colonies. Despite their large geographic size in an era when the fastest travel was at the pace of a galloping horse or a large sailing ship, they weren't terribly important to the British Empire, let alone to the wider world. The sugar-growing islands of the Caribbean were where the future seemed to be. These rebellious former colonies were nothing, really, but a market for British goods at the start of the industrial revolution, and maybe they could provide some foodstuffs and wood for ships.
The new states were jealous of their sovereignty. There was a certain amount of half-hearted cooperation among them, but even as the Treaty of Paris was being celebrated in the few New World streets, strains were growing between the various states that could easily have led to the dissolution of the malformed new nation. Some of the leading figures of the day, men that we still revere (despite their lack of foresight in having been rich, educated, articulate and white and, for the most part, slave-holders), saw well enough into the future, and appreciated the importance of unity among the States, to -- long story short -- create the Constitution that has been, since that era, our foundation as a nation.
The creation of the Constitution necessarily required compromises, many compromises, to get our government off the ground. One of those compromises, called the Great Compromise, found a way to balance the interests of large and small states. It gave us two legislative houses: one representing The People and one representing The States. The small states (small in population) would never have joined the union without the sweetener of equal representation in the Senate, where every state, no matter how large or how small, gets two senators.
Those small states are mostly still small, and they've been joined by other states with small populations: Alaska, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Maine, Hawaii, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas ... and so on. All the smaller states benefit enough, by virtue of the Great Compromise, to satisfy themselves that they have some protection for their interests when in conflict with the larger states. Without that added degree of protection, there would have been no United States of America, and the wise leaders of the larger states in 1787 understood that.
And there is one other aspect of the Great Compromise, one that is relevant here: the Electoral College. When a president of the United States is elected, it's the College that elects him (or, probably someday soon, her). The College is made up of delegations chosen by the several sovereign states, fifty of them now; delegations equal in number to the total representation of a state in the two houses of congress. So a large state like Texas, where I live, gets at present 40 electoral votes; California, the state with the largest population, gets 54. At the other extreme, a handful of small states (plus the District of Colombia) each get 3 electoral votes. It is another way in which small states are protected in a small way from the tyranny of the majority. A bit of lagniappe to encourage the small states' accession without really hurting the larger states.
Now, though, some 200+ years down the road from Philadelphia, adherents of one political party want to do away with the Electoral College, because in a closely divided country such as we have now (not for the first time), they find that it's possible for the people of those small states, the ones that got the little sweetener of slightly increased representation in the Electoral College, can put a candidate over the finishing line even when that candidate gets fewer votes overall. It happened in 2016, giving us a president who will, I don't doubt, go down in history as the worst we have ever had. It happened in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but won the Electoral College vote. It happened in 1876 and again in 1888. (In 1824, the winner was chosen by Congress when nobody won the Electoral College vote.)
The Democratic Party wants to do away with the Electoral College as undemocratic. Well, in a sense, it is: a Wyomingite's presidential vote counts for just a tiny bit more than my Texas vote does in the same race. I'm not terribly worried about that, as a voter, because (a) it's a minuscule difference, and (b) there's an upside. The upside is that, in order to win an election, a party has to make its message appeal to all parts of the country. As the Democrats saw in 2016, even when running a capable but somewhat disliked candidate against possibly the most moronic and incompetent candidate ever to glide down a golden escalator, they couldn't win the Electoral College, even with a sizeable majority of the popular vote, because their message didn't resonate in the vast heartland of this country. They won the big states on the East and West coasts, and other states in those areas, but they lost the South (of course) and the Intermountain West and the Midwest because not enough of those voters favoured the sort of message the Democrats were putting out; they preferred the ludicrous lies and platitudes of the insurgent party. Many of those people still do, but not as many.
And they should talk about their record, too. They probably won't win most of the Southern states (and y'all know why) in my lifetime, but if they could show people that it's been the Democratic administrations that have slowed the national debt (and even, once upon a time, a generation ago, reduced it); it's under Democratic administrations that the economy has done best since the 1970s; and now, finally, it's under a Democratic administration that bridges are being fixed, utilities upgraded, airports rehabilitated, and roads repaired. (How many "Infrastructure Weeks" did Donald Trump have, when it was all over? I lost count.)
The things important to all those counties coloured red in the top map are a little bit different from the things important to the blue counties ... but not by all that much. Most of their interests coincide. The Democrats, if they can hone their message, will win a lot of those red counties and red states if they stick to talking about what's doable.
And what's doable does not include getting rid of the Electoral College. It would require the assent of three-quarters of the states, meaning just thirteen (small) states can prevent it. They might get New Mexico to go along, and they might get New Hampshire and Vermont to give up their electoral edge. But that leaves more than 20 small states, more than enough to prevent ratification of that constitutional amendment. So they should just drop it, and try not to sound so damned radical. They should leave the stupidity to their opponents, who do it so much better these days anyway.
