Starting next month, the United States will have a minority government.

This assertion flies in the face of just about everything you have read, because the Republicans will control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. But the American system of representation, invented 229 years ago for 13 states that hugged the Atlantic shore, is more than ever out of tune with how the country’s citizens have distributed themselves, across now 50 states and between metropolitan areas and the countryside.

For the next two and probably four years, a majority of Americans will be governed by politicians largely elected by a minority of us. With the country already sharply divided, this is a problem that can no longer be politely ignored. Worse still, a government put in place by the peculiar workings of an outdated system is threatening to pursue quite radical policies destined to arouse considerable resistance from the disempowered majority.

The first problem is the electoral college.