See if you're able to solve this riddle: What's blue, a smidge of white and red all over?

Answer, the geographical map wherein red represents Republican strongholds and the blue serves as the marker for Democratic support. In the 2016 presidential election the amount of pure territory that was dominated by Republican voters was astonishing. Donald Trump won in total 2,822,736.9 square miles of actual land mass while Hillary Clinton secured only 765,219.4 square miles. If you look at the actual election night map, it is overwhelmingly red. Yet, despite the topographical dominance by the Grand Ole Party, President Donald Trump lost the overall vote total by nearly 3 million.

Hillary Clinton comfortably covered Trump's vote totals by winning by over a million and a half votes in New York State and crushed him nearly two-to-one in California, thoroughly thrashing him by an overall percentage of 61.5% to 33%. The margins are even more lopsided when you focus solely on urban areas within these progressive states. Cities in the ultra-blue states are Democratic gold mines.

Even in historically big blue states like California, New York and even, to a lesser extent, here in Connecticut, the overall land mass conquered by Republicans was impressive, but, in the end, the city voters in these states swallowed up most of the Republican candidates. For voters here in the Nutmeg State, big wins in Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, New London and even Norwich cemented the narrative that urban areas always cast a ballot towards the direction of liberalism. In fact, all New England fell under the spell of the Democrats.

My question is, why? If something is broken, why would you insist on repeating the courses of action that broke it to begin with? Many of the urban centers in this state, and across the country for that matter, are examples of dysfunction, corruption and disenchantment. Overbearing debt, crime and underperforming public schools are found within the boundaries of our cites. Yet, overwhelmingly, these voters rally around their Democratic favorites and continually return them to public office.

Rural and many suburban areas tend to be much more self-reliant and consistently insist on smaller, less invasive forms of local government. Locally Preston, Ledyard, Waterford, East Lyme and Montville all have Republicans in chief executive positions and/or in control of their legislative bodies. We will see what happens in Tuesday's election.

People seem to have more personal responsibility and are less likely to look for, or even need, the help from government in our suburban and rural towns. Mostly they want the essentials – roads maintained, good schools and public safety. Small-town politics are simpler and more straight-forward, with immediate feedback because you can look your elected official in the eye and hold him or her accountable for a pothole or missed trash pick-up.

Yet in the 2017 local elections, Democrats successfully flipped 18 cities and towns across the state, ranging the ultra-wealthy in Fairfield County to the rural regular folks in the northeast corner town of Pomfret. The blue, anti-Trump wave turned traditional Republican strongholds into question marks.

However, could growing animosity from the perceived negative trajectory of the nation work against the Democrats and backfire on Tuesday? Instead of solidifying and unleashing a brand-new, local version of the big blue wave 2.0, the ugly political rhetoric aimed at President Trump, driven in part by a biased media, may cause even the most casual of Trump supporters into an ultra-protectionist, circle-the-wagon mode around Republican candidates. If that hypothesis plays out, further erosion of Republican strongholds will fail to materialize.

One last thought. Why do we insist on engaging in these odd-year municipal elections? In a nation where we already struggle to get abled-bodied citizens to devote an extra 15 minutes of their busy schedules to vote during presidential elections, what makes us think that odd-year elections make sense? Voting only on even years only would be more cost effective. The idea should be to get people interested and motivated to vote.

And how about developing a modern voting system where you swipe a magnetic ID Card (with your picture on it) across a state-of-the-art kiosk? Once you do so, the computer will recognize your password-guarded account and give you access to a touchscreen with your voting options. A computer footprint of your selections will be logged in the mainframe as well as a print-out version you drop in the box as you leave.

Finally, I would open voting to the first Monday and Tuesday in November, making those two days holidays: Maybe even call this celebration of democracy the "Voice of Freedom."

Lee Elci is the morning host for 94.9 News Now radio, a station that provides "Stimulating Talk" with a conservative bent.