living in the beauty of dirtyfaith

So here is something else that has bothered me (and there has been a lot lately).  One can’t live in the past.  I get that.  But, yet, knowing that, here I go…back to the past.

First of all, this isn’t a post on the popular vote problem.  Since there really isn’t a problem with the “popular” vote.  I say this because there have only been three times in our elective history that a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election.  The first back in 1876, the second in 1888, and the third, of course, happening back in 2000 in which Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election.  And whether we like it or not, the popular vote is not how we elect our president.

So it is always perplexing to hear, conservatives especially, complain when a Democrat wins because “if you look at a picture of the United States it is pretty much all red with blue on the outer edges of both coasts.”  Now, of course, that is somewhat tongue in cheek because Michigan typically votes Democrat, along with Illinois, Iowa (lately) and Ohio (normally).

I used to think myself how unfortunate it was that Democrats would win the presidency when if you did look at a map it seemed to be that the whole middle of the country (or at least the majority of it) voted conservatively.  They are screwing middle America I thought.  They aren’t listening to over or close to half the states.  How can this be?!?  But then the obvious came crashing in on me.

Hypothetically if our nation had 100 million people spread out in 49 states and the other 200 million lived in 1 state and in that 1 state there was 225 electoral votes (since those electoral votes are distributed to each state based on their population) then all a candidate would have to do would be to win that 1 state and a few more and they would win the presidency.  In other words, it may seem unfair that “all” of the country is red except the outsides but if the “outside” is where most American’s live than it works just like it should.  Some may counter and say that is not totally fair because there are more “liberals” than “conservatives” in these places so their votes don’t count like they should.  And that may be true….but the same could be said for “liberals” living in conservative areas.