Drafting The Great Compromise?
Our Federal System Is Irreparably Broken — The Great Compromise
Why is our Federal System broken? Because the Representative Democracy that our Founding Fathers had envisioned has run its course and no longer represents the will of the American people. During the Constitutional Convention, most states wanted representation based on population, but a few small states wanted equal participation by state. The legislation was called The Great Compromise and barely passed.
It created the Senate, to which each state gets two members, regardless of population.
It also created a hole that keeps getting bigger, making it impossible for America to dig itself out through Amendments to the Constitution.
How did it break? Growing disparities in the populations of US states established a vocal minority with growing, unintended political power — far more political power in far fewer hands proportionally than they had during the Great Compromise. It has compounded the uneven balance of power.
The debate almost destroyed the U.S. Constitution...
The plan was at first rejected but then approved by a slim margin on July 23, 1787…
At the time of the convention, states’ populations varied, but not by nearly as much as they do today. As a result, one of the main lingering political effects of the Great Compromise is that states with smaller populations have a disproportionately bigger voice in the nation’s Congress.
— Amanda Onion, History.com
How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affects Politics Today
50 States and a Growing Population Disparity
We’ll use Wyoming and California to exemplify the problem today. They are the least and the most populous states in America.
After the Constitutional Convention, territories became states with boundaries drawn primarily by wealthy businessmen for political reasons. Wyoming had 55,000 of the required 60,000 residents to qualify when started petitioning to become a state.
Wyoming leaders gamed the system for a few years. One of the gimmicks they used to raise the population was to give women the right to vote 35 years before women gained the right to vote nationally. They wanted an influx of female migrants from other territories and states. Women had no other rights in the Wyoming territory. Interestingly, it wasn’t until 1978 that women were allowed to work in the mines. After a few years of gaming the system, Wyoming claimed to have a population of 125,000. That was all BS, of course.
Wyoming still has trouble expanding its population,
which recently declined three years in a row.
-.02% in 2016, -0.9% in 2017, and -0.2% in 2018
In addition to population disparity, our Founding Fathers could not foresee the effects of the Louisiana Purchase and the Treaty of Hidalgo. Those two agreements led to an America that would grow to nearly four times the number of states than it had when the Constitution was ratified.
Our Founding Fathers could not comprehend so many states with such a population disparity working against the very interests of the society they were trying to create.
This will get a bit mathematically wonky, but unfortunately, it is the only way to effectively explain it. We’ll compare the state populations in 1775 with recent state populations and demonstrate how the disparity grew substantially.
Populations of the Original 13 States and delegates allocated to each before the Great Compromise. National Archives Publication M866
The Great Compromise has always been an advantage for small states,
but their advantage today is far greater.
Georgia was the smallest state in 1785, and Virginia was the largest.
When the US Constitution was drafted and ratified, the population disparity among the original 13 States was far less than it is today. In 1775, Georgia was the least populous state with 32,060 people, and Virginia was the most populous state with 512,974 people.
During the Constitutional Convention,
Georgia’s population was 6.2% of
Virginia’s population and Georgia had 1.17%
of the total US population.
Wyoming is the least populous state with 576,851 people, and California is the most populous state with 39,538,223 people.
According to the 2020 Census,
Wyoming’s population is 1.4% of California’s population,
and Wyoming has only 0.17% of the total US population.
(seventeen one-hundredths of one percent)
Each Wyoming citizen gets 68 times the Senatorial power and
3 times the Electoral College votes as each California citizen.
As political scientist George Edwards III of Texas A&M University points out, California hosts about 68 times more people than Wyoming, yet they have the same number of votes in the Senate.
How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affects Politics Today
“The founders never imagined … the great differences in the population of states that exist today,” says Edwards. “If you happen to live in a low-population state you get a disproportionately bigger say in American government.”...
The imbalance of proportionate power favoring smaller states in the Senate means that interests in those states, such as mining in West Virginia or hog farming in Iowa, are more likely to get attention—and money—from federal coffers…
“In the Senate when they’re trying to get to 51 votes to pass a bill, every vote counts,” says Todd Estes, a historian at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. “That’s when the smaller states can demand amendments and additions to bills to look out for their own state’s interest.”
— Amanda Onion, History.com
We’ve Gone From Legislative Honor, Patriotism, and Unity …
to Self-serving Power Grabbing.
There have been cycles of differences between the parties and even reversals of positions between the parties over time. Take slavery and states rights for example. In the Civil War era, Democrats favored states rights and opposed civil rights. Over the next century, that trend reversed. Then there were many decades that the parties became respectful, honorable, and patriotic, looking for ways to work together, despite some extreme political differences. That has all changed.
It has been a long time since we’ve witnessed the patriotism of Republicans who sent Barry Goldwater with an ultimatum — resign or be impeached. It has been a long time since we’ve witnessed the bipartisanship of Tip O’Neill.
There used to be an agreement among legislators that placed
Country above Party.
Today, both parties are at war with each other and
have placed party power above American interests.
Republicans now seem to be over the edge. Today, Republicans who used to ridicule, insult, and disparage Trump in every way have become Trump sycophants, simply to grab and hold onto their power. It isn’t out of respect, as Trump has been an immoral and unprincipled scoundrel and scofflaw for his entire life — first evidenced when his father sent him to military school for anti-social behavior at the age of 13. The collection of illegal switchblades was the last straw.
Trump has given Republican politicians an offer they can’t refuse:
Support him and his Big Lie,
or get bludgeoned by his Cult of Personality,
the cudgel that Trump uses as his political currency.
Trump’s sycophants continue with the Big lie despite the fact that every authority in the country knows that systemic voter fraud was non-existent.
List of institutions that have publicly rejected Trump’s claims of systemic voter fraud:
- Security and Law Enforcement: NSA, DHS, DOJ, FBI, CIA.
- Judicial: 80+ federal and state judges in 60+ court actions found no evidence, including many federal judges who Trump appointed.
- Supreme Court: Unanimously, including the three Justices that Trump appointed. It is quite interesting though that Thomas was the sole dissenter when the court ruled that Trump must submit evidence to the Jan 6 Committee, most likely because of his wife Ginny’s involvement.
- Election Officials: All 50 states certified their elections, and none retracted their certification before Jan 6th, despite extreme efforts by Trump and his cronies — like the call to Secretary of State Raffensperger.
- Audits: There were numerous recounts and audits in several states. Even Cyber Ninjas gave Biden a couple hundred more votes.
- White House Counsel: The White House Counsel has one job, to advise the President and his administration against possible unethical, illegal, or unconstitutional actions that they might be planning or executing. Trump ignored their warnings.
Today, Trump’s sycophants are perfectly fine associating themselves with the malfeasance that Trump is perpetrating. We have a Republican Party that is run by the authoritarian Leader of a Cult of Personality, willing to throw away the American democratic experiment, simply to maintain power to enable his grifting.
Why Is It Irreparable?
The people in power who broke America are a minority of the population but represent a majority of the states. They benefit substantially from our broken system and have no incentive to change it. It stems from population disparity, which gets worse with every census cycle.
As already mentioned, California has 39.5 million people. According to the 2020 Census, if you want to add up the populations of the least populated red states that approach California’s population, you need to total the 16 least populated red states: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming. They give you a combined population of 38.2 million.
Although the populations are similar, those 16 red states have 32 Senators,
and California has only 2.
Worse: Those 16 states have 82 Electoral College votes, and California has only 55.
Although the 16 red states still have a smaller combined population,
they get a 49% advantage in national elections.
The trend of fewer and fewer people controlling the fates of more and more people will only continue and get worse.
It is an unsustainable political structure for a free, self-governed society.
Presidents have won the Electoral College vote but lost the popular vote only five times in US history. Republicans won four of those five elections. Before the 2020 election, the last occurrence was 132 years prior, in 1888.
Twice in 16 years, two Republican Presidents were elected without winning the popular vote.
- 2000: Bush over Gore, losing the popular vote by 0.5%
- 2016: Trump over Clinton, losing the popular vote by 2.1%
Republicans elected as President without a majority of the popular vote will continue to happen more frequently as our Federal System gives low-population states increasingly disproportionate electoral power.
Are we really beyond the point of no return?
I fear we’ve already reached a tipping point and are beyond the point of no return. The only way to fix it without civil unrest would be through a Constitutional Amendment, which seems highly unlikely. It would take a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress. Under the right circumstances, that might have a small chance of happening. Unfortunately, it also requires ratification by 38 state legislatures (three-fourths). That seems impossible under any foreseeable circumstances.
The states with the lowest populations are primarily red states. Most of them are kept out of Third World status by taxes from other states, contributed primarily by populous blue states. There is no incentive for them to want to change the system. It would be impossible to get 38 states to ratify such a change to our Consitution because such a vote would usurp the power of many states they need to amend it. It only takes 13 states to shoot down any effort to fix it, and there are already 16 states that we know would shoot it down because it would usurp their political power.
—— Is America Screwed ??? ——
Our Founding Fathers would never have accepted the Great Compromise if they knew how big of a hole it would create for us. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but I don’t see any way out other than the firm political and sovereign division of America. It might be similar to a UK-type of relationship — independent and sovereign countries enjoined by socioeconomic expedience and security interdependence.
The United States of Blue America sure has a nice ring to it. Stable, participatory, and calming.
The United States of Red America? Not so much. Untrustworthy, authoritative, and unsettling.
