Race, Democracy, And The Power Of Rural States

Yesterday, the NY Times ran an article entitled, “As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power“. The piece talks about the fact that, as this election has shown, “we still live with political institutions that have baked in a distinctly pro-rural bias, by design”. It attributes this rural bias to our founders’ firm belief in an agrarian society and our continued romanticism of rural life and the family farm. Of course, the urban population passed the rural all the way back in 1920 and the gap between the two has been growing ever since. And the disproportionate power of rural areas is now quite shocking. I’ve already posted about the absurd rural bias of the Electoral College where California should have nearly 4 times more votes than it actually has compared to Wyoming. But by far the most undemocratic institution that reflects enormous rural bias is the US Senate. California has 80 times more population than Wyoming but the exact same number of votes in the Senate. Today, it is possible for just 17% of the population to elect a majority in the US Senate. Aggressive gerrymandering not only in Congressional districts but also in state legislative districts have created the situation where a party, usually Democrats these days, can win over 50% of the vote in each of this areas and still end up as a minority. This bias obviously then extends to the kinds of legislation that gets passed and how and where government spending is apportioned.

Incredibly, the article neglects to even discuss two important corollaries to this rural bias. First, it blows the mind that race is not even mentioned in the article. The piece mentions the Connecticut Compromise which created the bias for smaller states in the Senate. But that compromise was not the end of the discussion, especially with regard to the structure of the House. It needed to be and was followed by the Three-Fifths Compromise which determined that slaves would count as three-fifths of a person in order to create Congressional districts. Slave states feared that they would be overwhelmed in the House if slaves did not count for Congressional apportionment despite the fact they were not allowed to vote. This compromise also accounts for the structure of the Electoral College. In fact, the tension over how to deal with slaves factored in virtually everything about the structure of Congress.  Similarly, the article implies that the rural bias was expanded by whichever party was in power as a means to maintaining that power. They mention the Homestead Act of 1862 and the division of the Dakota Territory into two states as examples of Republicans attempting to expand their power at the expense of Democrats. The article might have noted that the Homestead Act of 1862 was right smack in the middle of the Civil War and much of the point of the Act was to expand the number of free states. Similarly, the Dakota Territory was split into two states in 1869 because Democrats were forced to that compromise in order to ensure that a probably Democratic Montana would also be given statehood. The existence of South Dakota as a state was problematic, however, because most of the land was held by the Sioux. That resulted in nearly half the Sioux land being taken from them in an underhanded deal by General George Crook. We still see the legacy of that action today with the protests by the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota to protect the integrity of their land.

The second amazing thing about this article is the inability to reach any conclusion about what this rural bias will mean for the future of our democracy. And this blind spot seems to be widespread. Even Chris Hayes talked about Hillary Clinton’s growing popular vote lead and the fact that Democrats have won the popular vote in six out of the last seven elections but managed to only gain the presidency in four without extending that discussion to a logical conclusion. The concept of one man, one vote is the bedrock of our democracy for most people. But our governmental institutions are not designed that way. How long do we think that Democrats will continue to stand for a result where they get a large majority of votes and end up with minority representation, both at the national and state level. Eventually, there will be a backlash and a refusal to accept such a result any longer. If we believe in a real democracy, then the rules regulating our elections are going to have to change. Right now, Republicans have no reason to make those changes so Democrats must begin to make the case. Without a more fair electoral system, a time may come when our democracy may cease to exist.