Our democracy is menaced by two dragons. Here's how to slay them.
Our democracy is menaced by two dragons: an out-of-balance electoral college and gerrymandering. How can we slay them?
I’ve been going on for many moons about the need to grow the House of Representatives. But there are still two major arguments left for why this is so important. It turns out that growing the House is the way to address both the increasing illegitimacy of the electoral college and the corrosion to our system caused by gerrymandered political districts.
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First, the electoral college. As a basic part of our federalist constitutional architecture, the electoral college was created to give some protection to smaller states, so they wouldn’t simply be drowned out by larger ones in the selection of the president.
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But things went awry in 1929. After we capped the House then, the national population of course kept growing, while the numbers of representatives did not, and so neither did the number of electors. Slowly, what had been a modest weighting in favor of less populous parts of the country has become an ever-more-robust one in their favor. This has increased the probability of outcomes where the electoral college vote and the popular vote will be at odds.
https://wapo.st/3OqjehL
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