Had an interesting conversation this morning about machiavellian moves in politics and their ramifications. The biggest one talked about in history classes is the 3/5 compromise, which is abhorrent to the modern mind, but represented a compromise without which, the "United States" may well not have continued at all. I'm not a big alternate history kind of a guy, but I can imagine many big differences in the world if the Constitution had not been ratified. Of course, we'll never know. My honest, not especially educated guess, is that some or all of the states that momentarily won their freedom would have gone back to being puppets of the colonial powers, but not exclusively England. But who knows? Certainly not me.
An interesting counterpoint is the creation of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Idaho as separate states. This was pure politics--the Republicans (the party of civil rights at the time) did this for their own political gain. And without it, the various civil rights acts of the mid-century (through 1968) likely would never have passed (or much later). It's true that by 1948 the Democrats were including civil rights in their national platform, but it's also true that the Southern Democrats fought that tooth and nail until the 60s (at least in the senate--Lyndon Johnson is a complicated guy, but on this point, he made what I think was the right political calculation, even though he was largely right that it led to the loss of the South for the Democrats for a generation). It's fascinating to me that Georgia and North Carolina are more competitive today than Ohio and Missouri. It's also fascinating that the existence of particularly ND, SD, MT, and WY as separate states, where, by population and demography they would make more sense as one (although by land mass, that would be really big)--and the same could just as easily be said about several of the original colonies (Rhode Island and Delaware on one hand, and New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine--the latter two were not original colonies, but whatever--on another).
As a Democrat and a Californian, I am, of course, aghast at the inequities of the electoral college (although personally I don't argue for its abolition). An interesting exercise is to think about what would happen if we combined states to make about 3 million people the minimum number, and, say, 13 million the max (these are arbitrary, but just looking at population sizes, those are two pretty easy splitting points, see
here.)
So, combining states on the small end:
Add Alaska to Washington (because Alaska and Hawaii together don't get you to 3 million people)--(blue), and add Hawaii to one of the new Californias (see below).
Combine Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire (total population right about 3 million), (blueish swing state).
Delaware and Rhode Island together don't get you to 3 million, and aren't geographically contiguous anyway, so stuff Delaware into Maryland (blue), and Rhode Island into Connecticut (blue).
Squeeze Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas together, into a one state (Big Sky) of about 5 million people (RED).
Nebraska can't survive on its own, so squeeze it into Kansas (RED).
Then West Virginia into Kentucky (RED), and New Mexico into Arizona (very much a swing state--maybe the swingiest)
Mississippi, Arkansas, Nevada, and Iowa are now the smallest states, at 3-3.2M people.
On the other end, California, with ~39M people gets split into five states: put Hawaii with San Diego for Holiday California; Orange County with rural southern California, for Red California, the LA area would be two states, industrial LA (South), and Hollywood LA (north), and Green California (Norcal/Coast).
Texas, with 30M people is next on the chopping block: 4 states? 7.5M each? Houston Area, Dallas/Fort Worth, West Texas, and Remainder Texas (I'm not Texan, someone help me with that).
New York into two states: New York City (Blue), and Not New York City (swing blue).
Florida into three states, but add the 3 million American citizens in Puerto Rico who are disenfranchised now to the South: North (red), Middle (red), and South (blue?).
What's the end result for the electoral college?
I think that puts us at 46 states (but check my math), still with small and big states, and still with rural states and urban states.
No state has fewer than 5 electoral college votes, and none has more than 19. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina are now the biggest states.
Electorally how would it change the balance?
Washington Stays blue. Holiday California is blue. Red California is red. The three remaining Californias are different shades of blue (dark in the north, medium, but different kinds of medium blue in the two LAs (rich blue in Hollywood, middle class blue in industrial).
Vermont, NH, and Maine are probably a swing state that leans blue.
NYC is blue, but not NYC is possibly a swing state leaning blue.
Texas probably has two clear reds, and two swing-ish states that lean red.
Florida probably becomes two red states, and a blue state (assuming Puerto Rico is reliably blue--Democrats certainly think so)? (I don't know Florida's political demographis that well, only that it used to be a swing state, and isn't any longer.)
The Big Sky State is deep red, but only one instead of four.
The new Kansas remains red.
Interestingly, what this would do (aside from subtracting EC votes because of the reduction in senators, and enfranchising Puerto Rico) isn't all that dramatic. The current electoral college map, crudely divided, has a roughly equal umber of people in solidly one-color states, but the Red states have an EC advantage. Unsurprisingly (given that and recent elections), there are more swing states that lean blue, and fewer swing states that lean red, but enough up for grabs that in a national election, both parties have a shot.
Under my changes (and my crude characterization of voting propensities), there would be slightly more people in solidly blue states, but the change in EC votes would still favor the red states. There would also be more swing states, and still more on the blue side of things, with almost exactly the same percentage of blue/red swinging states. Arizona plus New Mexico feels like a complete toss-up. Long story short, as much as I think Californians get screwed in the Presidential election, even the way I propose to fix it wouldn't really change things all that much. (Although representation in the Senate is a big deal, not to be ignored.)
See here (State, political lean, population in millions, EC votes):
And the time I've spent on this is one of the reasons I should spend less time here...and feel free to sharp shoot my inconsistencies in numbers and stuff--I've already spent way too much time on this.
