Any political system requires “buy in” from a very large percentage of those being governed. If the 600,000 people who live in Wyoming thought they had absolutely no say in how the country ran because there are like 8 million people in NYC, 3.5 million in LA. Or even the just about 600,000 people who live in Harrisburg, PA … they don’t have much incentive to peaceful participation in the federal government.

I hear folks in rural parts of Ohio saying the same thing — cannabis will be legalized because of the three C’s (Cinci, Columbus, Cleveland) and they get no say in it. Which made me curious — just how “outnumbered” are these “rural” folks. So I grabbed a list of cities in Ohio with population numbers. Columbus is huge, almost a million people! But there are almost 12 million people in Ohio. So Columbus is just under 8% of the population. Add in Cleveland, and you are up to almost 11% of the population. Keep going — add Cinci to get 13.5%. So the “three C’s” are only 13.5% of the entire population. Toledo gets us over 15%. But these are hardly “bossing everyone else around” percentages. I was down to the 143rd largest city in Ohio — Fostoria with just over 13,000 people — before “cities” account for 50% of the state’s population.

And that assumes 100% of people in urban areas are voting against whatever 100% of these rural people want to see happen. Which is absurd. If 80% of the people in these cities were voting against “the rural way”, we’re adding cities with just under 4,000 residents before we reach 50%.

If 75% are voting against “the rural way”, we’re down to cities with just under 2,000 residents.

While I think Wyoming is probably right — there are enough liberal voters nationally that conservatives would be “outnumbered” without creative districting, over-representation in the senate, and over-representation in the electoral college … the same doesn’t seem to hold true in Ohio.