THE RESULT OF COLORADO'S SECESSION HISSYFIT COULD BE A LESS DEMOCRATIC STATE

A month ago, I told you about efforts by some Colorado counties to secede from the state, because the county commissioners don't like recent the pro-environment laws and gun ordinances. Now people seem to be talking about this again:

There's a growing effort to create a 51st state out of parts of northeast Colorado and southwestern Nebraska.

Ten counties started talking about seceding last month. Now some people in Lincoln and Cheyenne counties say they want to join a new state they'd call "North Colorado," reports CBS Denver station KCNC-TV....

The secessionist movement is the result of a growing urban-rural divide, which was exacerbated after this year's legislation session, where lawmakers raised renewable energy standards for rural electric co-ops, floated bills increasing regulations on oil and gas and passed sweeping gun control....

Hmmm -- I was reading a couple of days ago that a secession effort was appearing less likely -- but that doesn't mean that the secessionist wannabes are through pouting about the fact that sometimes you wind up on the losing side in a democratic system:

Fervor for a plan to carve northeastern Colorado into a 51st state has been cooled by legal barriers and a lack of public support, but commissioners from rural counties say they're not done fighting for better representation of their citizens.

... the counties now are contemplating the Phillips County Proposal, which would change the way state House districts are represented at the Capitol....

The Phillips County Proposal? What's that?

... the Phillips County plan ... would base state House or Senate representation on area instead of population, a move that can be done through a bill in the state Legislature or, if that doesn't work, through a citizen initiative.

It would be similar to Congress, in which the House of Representatives is based on population but the Senate has two senators from every state regardless of their population.

Currently, both Colorado's House and Senate are based on population, which gives heavy sway to the needs and values of those who live along the Front Range, Schafer said.

Yes, it does give heavy sway to those people -- because there are more of them. It's called "democracy." But right-wingers don't believe in democracy when the consequence of democracy is that they're not the dominant group. Instead, they whine about secession, then demand an anti-democratic reworking of the legislation, as their fallback position.

I can't find an up-to-date source that compares Colorado's counties by both size and population, but you can go here to see the rankings as of 2000. At that time, Denver County was the most populous county in the state, but it ranked 63rd out of 64 counties in terms of size. According to the secessionists' plan, I guess Denver County would have the second-smallest state Senate delegation, even though it's the state's most populous county (or, now, the second-most populous).

If you like the U.S. Senate, where Wyoming and California have the same number of senators even though California's population is 66 times the population of Wyoming, you'll love this plan.

If the secessionists were being honest, they'd just call for the disenfranchisement of all liberals and Democrats. That's what they really want, because they don't believe we're Americans.