Electoral College Votes by Congressional District?

[CatholicEdHead]

Boy, the more I follow the WI GOP they keep going more and more over the top. One of them has now proposed giving electoral votes by congressional district, which would mean a few would go to Romney next fall instead of Obama (could be 8-2 or 7-3 Romney this way if 2010 voting patterns hold).

http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20111013/SHE0101/111013020/Update-LeMahieu-proposal-would-change-Wis-electoral-college?odyssey=tab|topnews|img|FRONTPAGE

[PatrynXX]

1. yeah but not entirely against the idea.

since Nebraska has something similar.. Omaha was rather blue on that map :P, okay the county Omaha is in...

[AleksS]

3. ONLY if EVERYONE does it.

The trouble is, right now only three states seem to be doing this: OH, WI, and PA. Three states which:

1) All went to Obama in 2008
but
2) Got redistricted by gerrymandering republics following 2010 elections.

As long as only these three states do it, then it's just a free grab of electoral votes by Republics. From a Democratic perspective alone that's crappy. But that's not all folks. It's bad for the people in those states too. It is GOOD to be a battleground state. Our projects mean something when our state has 10 electoral votes going to the winner. Under this new plan, the state will net a +1 or +2 advantage to the winner. We'll only be slightly less important to lawmakers than North Dakota.

Now, I'm the first guy to say the electoral college is a useless relic of a bygone age. But there's a right way and a wrong way to go about circumventing it. The Republican gerrymander-based plan is the wrong way. For a look at the right way, check out the National Popular Vote Project:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php

Basically it says that the states adopting it will send their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. It only comes into effect though after states with 270 electoral votes have adopted the measure--enough to guarantee that the national popular vote winner is also the electoral vote winner. Until then, states can allocate their EV's in the traditional way. 9 states with 132 Electoral Votes have adopted it already.

If Republics were interested in really making this about elections and making every vote count, they'd go with something like the National Popular Vote project, and not a partisan, gerrymander-based plan that's bad for the state, but good for Republicans. But as usual, you can tell when Republics are lying just by checking to see if their lips are moving.

[mvymvy]

5. Most Republicans do Not Support District Method

Most Republican legislators in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nebraska do not support awarding electoral votes by congressional district method. The leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support. While in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, some Republican legislators insist the states must change from the winner-take-all method to the district method, while most are opposed or not commenting.

And up in Maine, the only other state beside Nebraska to use the district method, earlier this year, Republican leaders proposed and passed a constitutional amendment that, if passed at referendum, will require a 2/3rds vote in all future redistricting decisions. Then they changed their minds and wanted to pass a majority-only plan to make redistricting in their favor even easier.

Obvious partisan machinations like these should add support for the National Popular Vote movement. If the party in control in each state is tempted every 2, 4, or 10 years (post-census) to consider rewriting election laws and redistrict with an eye to the likely politically beneficial effects for their party in the next presidential election, then the National Popular Vote system, in which all voters across the country are guaranteed to be politically relevant and treated equally, looks better and better.

Given the choice, most voters in these states and the U.S. want a national popular vote for president.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO - 68%, FL - 78%, IA 75%, MI - 73%, MO - 70%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM-- 76%, NC - 74%, OH - 70%, PA - 78%, VA - 74%, and WI - 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK - 70%, DC - 76%, DE - 75%, ID - 77%, ME - 77%, MT - 72%, NE 74%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM - 76%, OK - 81%, RI - 74%, SD - 71%, UT - 70%, VT - 75%, WV - 81%, and WY - 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR - 80%,, KY- 80%, MS - 77%, MO - 70%, NC - 74%, OK - 81%, SC - 71%, TN - 83%, VA - 74%, and WV - 81%; and in other states polled: CA - 70%, CT - 74%, MA - 73%, MN - 75%, NY - 79%, OR - 76%, and WA - 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

NationalPopularVote.com

[sybylla]

2. Even better - let's dump the electoral college all together.

What the hell is the matter with the popular vote? I see no reason to make this process even more complex than it already is by awarding some to one candidate and some to another in some convoluted process Joe Blow won't get.

[mvymvy]

4. National Popular Vote is 49% of the way to go into effect

To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large population states, including one house in Arkansas(6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District of Columbia, Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (29), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island (4), Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by the District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), New Jersey (14), Maryland (11), California (55), Massachusetts (10), Vermont (3), and Washington (13). These nine jurisdictions have 132 electoral votes -- 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.