The Problem with Rotten Boroughs

Volubilis at Dusk - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Michael Burnaugh who lives in Georgia

The term “rotten boroughs” came to us from the British. As population shifted from rural to urban in the industrial revolution, rural interests held on to power by refusing to redistrict on the basis of population. By the time of the Great Reform Act of 1833, the largest economic interest in these boroughs would appoint a member of parliament.

Our Constitution created rotten boroughs in every slave state by allowing slaves to be counted as three fifths of a person for purposes of apportionment. This gave slave states more power than they deserved, and was unnecessary as the Senate already had abolished the ideal of majority rule. Slavery was impossible to abolish after the Missouri compromise as it balanced the admission of slave and free states.

As Richard Weaver wrote: Ideas have Consequences.

My state of Georgia used a variant of this tactic to suppress the rising urban power of Atlanta after the Civil War.This was a situation unique to the South, where one-party rule was established soon after Reconstruction. The Democratic Party primary WAS the election, so rural Democrats instituted the county unit vote, where the candidate who won each county got one vote. Atlanta’s size mattered not. This guaranteed rural dominance until Gray v. Sanders in 1963. Indeed, rural counties subdivided to get more influence, until the state of 58000 square miles had 162 counties averaging less that 400 square miles each. Racist Governor Eugene Talmadge never took his campaign to a city. Jim Crow lasted until the Civil Rights act .

Even today, Georgia pays a terrible price for its version of the rotten borough. Over one hundred counties have less than ten thousand people. They cannot offer essential services. Corruption by local officials is necessary to supplement meager salaries. School districts now span more than two counties to command enough resources to field a football team. Yet no one in either party proposes the obvious solution—consolidation of counties. Government is the one source of jobs and the state and federal hand-outs which support political power. Money flows in but never seems to improve the lot of the people. Black rural Georgia has third-world AIDS rates. White rural Georgia has the rotting teeth and open sores of the crystal meth epidemic. Consequences indeed!

Now America has a new variant of the original Constitutional slavery compromise: rotten boroughs based on population growth. Enter the illegal alien!

As southwestern cities are overwhelmed , Congress faithfully counts each non-citizen as a complete person, and it takes fewer and fewer voters to elect a member of Congress. In California , Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman received about 150,000 votes each in their liberal districts, but Congressmen Baca and Sanchez needed only 52,000 and 47000 each. In Texas, Mexican surnamed Congressmen needed from fifty to sixty thousand votes. This is government control on the cheap. It costs a lot of money to elect someone in most districts, but not in rotten boroughs.

And the consequences? Rotten boroughs easily gave the Democrats the votes needed to pass health care. Bad enough, but it generates even worse down the line.To win National elections, Democrats can’t depend on the small turnouts of actual citizens in rotten boroughs. They need Acorn for that. Electoral fraud is just another consequence. I give you unassailable proof. In the years leading up to the last election, Dems denounced all voter ID requirements. As there is absolutely no logic to their position,it was their way of telling us they intended to cheat.

Until Congress apportions on the basis of citizens only, this problem will only get worse.