Winning the presidency isn’t about who you nominate, but about who votes — and most importantly about where they live.

The Democratic Party has recognized this, and turned it to a huge advantage in winning the last two presidential elections, and creating what appears to be a virtual lock on the presidency into the foreseeable future by dominating the Electoral College map.

This demographic domination by Democrats has many components, but one in particular that is easy to recognize is the growing success of the Democratic Party in winning over Latinos — the fastest growing bloc of voters in the country. Combined with the increasing number of minority voters as a whole, and their proclivity to vote Democratic, this has put Republicans in an almost untenable position. No matter how many individual citizens vote Republican, if minority voters in largely populated states continue to swing heavily toward Democrats, then an Electoral College victory by Republicans grows more and more remote.

Perhaps this sense of helplessness is what has persuaded many voters, presumably Republicans, to embrace the idea of secession from the United States as a way to restore their confidence that they will not just become increasingly irrelevant as the culture changes and the vision of the Founding Fathers is brushed aside.

But face it, secession is not an answer. As an intellectual exercise, it is intriguing to talk about what the Founders intended when the several states joined together to form the United States of America, and clearly Thomas Jefferson at least envisioned that states would retain the right to remove themselves from the union as a way to restrict the appetite of the federal government for more and more power.

As a practical matter, however, the issue of secession was settled once and for all by the Civil War when President Lincoln waged a bloody battle to protect the Union and to keep it whole. There is no right of secession any longer because the federal government says there is no right, and the feds ultimately determine what rights the states have both through the power of courts and the power of guns.

On the other hand, neither the courts, nor guns, nor even the Constitution itself can stop human beings from aspiring to independence, striving for freedom, or seeking “to effect their Safety and Happiness,” as the Declaration of Independence would have it.

So, if secession is outlawed and revolution is folly, what mechanism remains available to the several states and their people to achieve the liberty that our Founding Fathers asserted in 1776? How, in other words, can the discontented states “provide new Guards for their future security” while still remaining conjoined with the other states that don’t feel threatened by an ever tightening federal chokehold?

The answer, once again, is demographics — and the ultimate solution was once again provided by the genius of the Founding Fathers as embedded in the United States Constitution.

I am referring to the much maligned Electoral College itself, the very institution that seems to guarantee Democratic victory.

Unless the Republicans are willing to permanently cede the presidency to the Democratic Party, they need to develop a new strategy for winning in the Electoral College that takes advantage of their own strengths and doesn’t try to win at the Democrats’ game.

In other words, if Republicans expect to remain relevant, they don’t need to change their message, or their messenger; they need to change the electoral map.

Remember that the number of Electoral College votes awarded to states is based on congressional representation, which in turn is based on the U.S. Census. Increase your population, like California and Florida, and you will increase your electoral votes. Watch people flee your borders, and see your state’s importance decline a la New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

There are two ways that Republicans can take advantage of this unique electoral system — one long-term and one short-term. Both methods rely partly on human nature, and partly on harnessing the anger that would lead a million people in the past 10 days to sign online petitions stating they want to secede from their beloved United States.

The truth is that people can restore our nation to its founding principles and they can do so without leaving their country — all they need to do is leave their state!     

Put another way: To change the future, change your demographics. If the Republican Party, for instance, could encourage 50,000 reliable Republican voters to move to Ohio over the next four years, they could probably compete in that crucial state in 2016. Likewise Florida. Likewise Colorado. That is the short-term solution.

It sounds crazy, but it just might work.

Remember, the original signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in order to fight tyranny and promote liberty. But they were committing revolution and putting their very lives at risk. Moving from California to Colorado only requires an adventurous spirit.

Remember also that the vast majority of the original colonists had been part of a mass exodus that was much more dangerous, much more risky and much less certain of a positive outcome when they sailed from England, Ireland, and the rest of Europe to seek a new life in the New World. If unhappy Republicans decide to abandon Blue states and head to the Red states, they are only engaged in what the signers of the Declaration enshrined for them — the pursuit of happiness.

Indeed, human nature declares that for small-government Republicans to remain in California, they are doing harm to their own persons. Most of them who have the capacity would eventually migrate across the border to Arizona or Nevada or Utah or Montana anyway — just because of their own self-interest in lower taxes, greater safety and increased liberty. Isn’t that the same urge which liberal Democrats tell us justifies the migration of Mexicans illegally across the southern border?

If enough Republicans were to follow their self-interest so that they can live in Red States where there is less regulation and less government, they will accomplish two effects — first, they will swell the ranks of Republican voters in those states where they move. This will allow Republicans to have a chance to win electoral votes in the swing states immediately.

Secondly, they will increase the overall population in those states, so that all Red states which are so enlarged will have greater congressional representation following the 2020 Census and greater clout in the Electoral College starting in 2024. That would ultimately make the swing states less significant, and would make a Red state Republican victory more and more likely — hopefully bringing with it a dedication to stripping back the power of the federal government to manageable proportions.

Call it the Nonviolent Revolution of 2024 — using brains rather than bullets to achieve a counter-transformation of America back to its founding principles.

And if 12 years seems like a long time to wait for a plan to come to fruition, remember that it took 11 years for the seeds planted with the Declaration of Independence to come to fruition in the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

If we want the Constitution back, we had better start working on it today.