Real Majority Rule

Let me start by saying this article isn't specifically about Democrats and Republicans.  It uses them as examples to make a point, but the point is about elected officials of whatever party taking advantage of a biased system to ignore the will of the majority. Today people talk about the Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress.  This has allowed them to carry out various policies.  Their record of passing legislation in Congress has not been as extensive as one might have expected.  Some GOP efforts in Congress have failed because of opposition from extremist Republicans in Congress.  In one famous case, the Republicans lost by one vote when John McCain decided not to follow the herd.  On the other hand, there have been presidential actions, confirmation of nominees, actions by cabinet members, etc.  Congress has passed the tax bill, confirmed one Supreme Court nominee, and are attempting to push through another Supreme Court appointment. How does t

Since January of 2017, one party has controlled the Presidency, the Senate and the House, and has been working to install enough judges to control the courts for decades.  In situations like this, the party in power will tend to say, "Elections have consequences," "The voters have spoken," and/or "We have a mandate from the people." However, our election and government systems are organized in such a way that the majority of voters - as distinct from anti-majority mechanisms in the system - may have actually said they wanted something else.  And the 2016 election is a good example of that - and not just in terms of the presidential selection by the Electoral College. Presidential election First, let's look at the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election.  Wikipedia shows us the vote counts below.  (I'm only showing the counts for the Democrats and Republicans as the candidate with the next highest vote count received only 3.28% of the