Scary stuff from Slate "The Real Threat to American Democracy Isn't Russia. It's the Right." [View all]

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/the-real-threat-to-american-democracy-is-the-right.html

A week ago, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, brought some attention to a growing threat to the integrity of our elections. “By 2040 or so,” he tweeted, “70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent.” Two days later, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump ran a check on the numbers, citing an analysis of Census Bureau projections from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. “In broad strokes,” he wrote, “Ornstein is correct.”

[In 2040] eight states will have just under half of the total population of the country, 49.5 percent, according to the Weldon Cooper Center’s estimate. The next eight most populous states will account for an additional fifth of the population, up to 69.2 percent — meaning that the 16 most populous states will be home to about 70 percent of Americans.

[…]Ornstein’s … point is clear: 30 percent of the population of the country will control 68 percent of the seats in the U.S. Senate. Or, more starkly, half the population of the country will control 84 percent of those seats. His tweet goes further, suggesting that the demographics of those states will differ from the larger states, as well, and, therefore, so will their politics.

In short, beyond holding an advantage in the House even before the recent wave of Republican gerrymandering, the most conservative regions of the country—places more white, more male, and more rural than the country at large—have and will continue to hold a lock on the United States Senate that will grow ever more absurd as the the country’s actual population centers grow, a situation that grants them a veto over legislation that the majority of Americans might want, and the power to shape or shrink government programs and initiatives disproportionately needed by women and minorities living in less conservative states.


snip - sobering read. Check the rest at the link above