James Fallows points to Neil Freeman at FakeIsTheNewReal.org who has mapped out a proposal for Electoral College Reform:
The electoral college is a time-honored system that, has only broken down three times in over 200 years. However, it’s obvious that reforms are needed. the organization of the states should be altered. This Electoral Reform Map redivides the territory of the United States into 50 bodies of equal size. The 2000 Census records a population of 81,421,906 for the United States. The states ranged in population from 493,782 to 33,871,648 [Wyoming and California, respectively]. In this map, new states have formed, all with equal populations of roughly 5,617,000. [Every effort was made to place major cities and their close-in suburbs in a single state, leading to slight variences in state sizes. Each state shown has a population between 5.4 and 5.635 million, according to Census 2000 figures. Most are 5.616 million. The District of Columbia is preserved as it is.]
Fallows adds:
I love many of the other state names — Lincoln, Joaquin, Tombigbee. My childhood home would have been along the border of Coronado and Mojave. In a reapportioned Senate each of these units would have two votes.
In the same spirit of “zero-based governance,” also consider H. Res. 1018, introduced this week in the House of Representatives, calling on the Senate — please! — to drop the recent aberrational practice of applying the filibuster to all legislation, and instead to reserve it for rare, emergency use.
SEE ALSO — Fallows’ is on a tear against the filibuster. I’m right there with him. It likely grows out of his piece in The Atlantic wondering, Is America Going to Hell?
Praise for from…
Matthew Yglesias, “I can’t recommend James Fallows’ article on declinism in America highly enough. It’s a multifaceted piece that I won’t attempt to reduce into a pat summary”
Eric Martin, “Fallows’ article is another masterpiece, a stark look at the enormity of the problems facing us, and some useful suggestions for charting a course out. It is worth the read in full – more than once.”
Matthew C. Nisbet, “In his must-read analysis, Fallows takes a critical look at American society in general, describing that not just science, but U.S. societal status has almost always been in a constant state of perceived crisis, ranging from colonial laments over living up to God’s expectations to a Cold War evolution of “falling behind” the Soviet Union and now China and other countries.”