One thing the 2020 Presidential election has shown is that in these United States those in rural counties like Jefferson do not have the same voting representation that those in urban areas do. A truism here is that the tail is wagging the dog. I took some time recently and compiled election data by county from the Politico site, which is not a right-leaning site. I learned there are 3,140 counties in these United States, and only Alaska with 29 counties did not report data at the county level. That leaves 3,111 counties. Of those, Mr. Biden apparently won 526 or about 17%. Mr. Trump apparently won the remaining 2,585 or about 83%. Some interesting data from several states:
New York, a sure-thing for democrats each election has 62 counties. Of those, 48 or over 77% voted for Mr. Trump.
Michigan, where election results were contested, has 83 counties. Mr. Biden won only 11. Mr. Trump took the remaining 72 for almost 87% of the counties.
Pennsylvania, where the state failed to follow its own law, has 67 counties. Of those, Mr. Biden only won 13 or about 19%. Mr. Trump took the remaining 54 for over 80%.
In the news recently several counties in Oregon are moving to join the state of Idaho. Why? Because they disagree with the manner in which the state is being operated under democrat leadership, and they have little representation. In Oregon, there are only 36 counties. Mr. Biden only won 10 of the counties. The remaining 26 or over 72% went for Mr. Trump. A similar idea has been proposed to split up California.
All told, Mr. Biden only won by over 50% in 9 of 50 states at the county level: California, Connecticut, his home state of Delaware (3 counties and 1 of them went for Mr. Trump), Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The US Senate was established so larger-populated states would not have more power than smaller ones. Each gets two Senators. The House is based upon population, and the total of House and Senate seats determines electoral votes for President. Each Representative or Senator represents one vote, so greater population equals more electoral votes. One key idea behind a Constitutional Republic such as ours is to ensure the rights of the minority are protected. Despite some inaccurate beliefs, we are not a democracy. A democracy is simply mob rule.
The fairest solution here is representation using the same concept as Senate elections- assign one vote per county. The first candidate to get to 50% plus one county wins. Doing this removes the inequity that current urban areas enjoy. I have no doubt this idea- like term limits- would be heavily opposed by federal career politicians since they tend to benefit from the status quo.
Finally, election security in this day and age should be simple, and one that allows for independent verification of vote tallies after an election. We’ve used credit cards to buy online for a long time now, and chip and pin cards are the most secure. As one that worked many fraud cases as an investigator, I know there is likewise technology that allows for verification of a legitimate purchase. I’d suggest using this technology for voting- a voter goes to the election office and obtains the card, which is then used to vote. Multiple votes from the same card could be traced and verified, and fraudulent ones excluded. Properly configured, this would also allow a voter to log in and verify their vote was as cast and counted.
Paul Henry