After last fall’s election of La Plata County’s Board of County Commissioners, we read of some county neighbors complaining about the “undemocratic” method used to elect commissioners in our county. The complaint was based on the fact that incumbent Matt Salka was reelected but did not carry the majority of votes in District 3, where he lives. District 3’s count was 62% for Paul Black and 38% for Salka.
According to Colorado law since 1902, commissioners shall represent the district in which they reside, but all registered voters in the county vote for commissioners.
In a county with a population over 70,000, the voters may petition to change the above rule. La Plata County, with 56,407 residents as of 2023, does not meet the 70,000 resident threshold.
Salka did, in fact, receive 56% of the 34,099 votes cast in the county, as opposed to Black’s 44%, but many residents of District 3 still hold the perception that this is not democracy, that an election’s outcome should represent the majority vote.
For those county neighbors truly concerned about “undemocratic” elections, they should take a serious look at the Electoral College and the method of selecting the president of the United States.
The Electoral College was created in the Constitution as an effort to isolate the powerful new presidency from the direct reach of democracy because the framers of the Constitution felt democracy was risky, and the selection of a president and vice president should fall only to a temporary assemblage of distinguished citizens who were free to make their own judgment of the candidates.
Today, this process still exists, as the states select “distinguished citizens” to serve as the 538 members of the Electoral College based on the total number of members of Congress. A president only needs 270 electors to win an election.
This process also gives an outsize proportion of power to electors from small states. As a result, California, which has 54 members of Congress representing 38.9 million people, has each elector represent over 720,000 people.
In contrast, Wyoming, which has three members of Congress representing 586,485 people, has each elector represent 195,495 people.
In other words, each elector from California represents about one quarter the voting power of the Wyoming elector. Is this democracy? In fact, it takes the 15 smallest electoral states to add up to the electoral numbers of California, and the combined population of those 15 states still falls almost 30 million people short of California. Is this democracy?
In another instance of “undemocratic” processes, consider the Senate itself. The compromise agreed upon to get the Constitution accepted was to grant each state two members of the upper chamber, the Senate. These senators would be chosen by the legislatures of each state, as the framers shielded them from the will of democratic majorities, for they did not trust the people’s voice.
This was finally changed in 1913, during the Progressive Era, by the 17th Amendment, which established the direct election of senators.
But the fact still remains that senators from the states with the smallest population wield the same power as those from the most populous states.
In fact, the 25 smallest states in terms of population amount to about 16% of the population of the entire country yet possess half the votes in the Senate. Is this democracy?
The eight most populous states amount to half the entire population of the nation but possess only 16% of the votes of the Senate. Is this democracy?
During the Progressive Era (1890-1916), four amendments were added to the Constitution, including women’s suffrage and the direct election of senators.
The current national Popular Vote movement would solve the undemocratic Electoral College problem by using the popular vote to determine president election outcomes, like every other election, without amending the Constitution.
Colorado currently is one of 17 states that have agreed to this compact, which was passed by the voters in 2020. To make our presidential elections truly democratic, a majority of states will need to join the compact. Perhaps, then, we will truly be a democracy.
Gene Orr, M.Ed., is a retired educator with 43 years of experience teaching social studies and history in middle school, high school and college in Durango. He lives in Kline.
