I second that emotion!
Posted on 09/13/2011 6:25:41 PM PDT by mandaladon
“Now, that would be a safe dem electoral vote from that district, but look how much turf they’d have to cede which would be more likely to go Republican or at least stay in a contestable swing status. They can either ‘mander a safe congressional district / electoral vote, but in so doing they’d be surrendering their ability to influence other districts.”
I don’t think it works that way. If the dems gerrymander to help their congress critters, it probably helps their president also. Except in heavy dem states. That would give votes to R’s.
Won’t happen here in mexifornia, especially with the mexican politicians doing their best to accommodate the illegals voting population.
We will be redistricting with a GOP controlled legistlature.
Some of us in the midstate are hoping that the 12th district moves to York, Adams, and Cumberland (presently 19th district, but we will be losing #19 permanently).
1st, 2nd, 13th, and 14th are safe Democrat
3rd, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 15th, - marginal
4th/12th (one will be eliminated) - marginal
17th - marginal.
5th, 6th, 9th, 16th, 18th, 19th - safe Republican
17th may be redrawn to favor Democrats, thereby tilting the
10th and 11th to the Republicans.
You’re right; it could hurt but it’s been what, 1988 since the GOP has gotten any EV’s from PA?
If I were going to push something like this in a state, I would suggest they allocate 1/2 delegate to each congressional district, with the rest to the statewide winner. The problem would be sending half-electors; so if they split oddly, you would simply round up both candidates, and then award the remaining statewide.
That would make winning the state important, but still give each candidate a reason to appear around the state to win pockets of votes.
In the end though, the ONLY thing I really would like to do with the electoral college is to split California into two states, so that there isn’t this huge democratic albatross hanging over our country.
You cannot have HALF electors. The State Legislature can appoint or have a popular vote election in the State to select said electors. Since electors are actual people, called “electors”, there is no lessor division of electors than the number ONE. That at least is what the US Federal Constitution mandates.
dvwjr
If we want to leave the USA as a Republic rather than an a democracy, then we should adopt an amendment mandating all electoral votes to the winner of the state’s presidential vote. The Democrats are trying to get a national popular vote.
Also, I won’t trust the PA GOP as long as Rob Gleason is party chairman.
I’m actually OK with this since I’m tired of Philly, Pittsburgh, and Scranton overruling the rest of the Commonwealth each and every presidential election.
It's a simple numbers game. If you structure to make a "safe district" for a congressman, you're putting your eggs in one basket, and losing presidential support in the other districts in the state. If you divide your voters to try to hold electoral votes in a number of districts, your congress critter's hold on his/her seat becomes increasingly tenuous.
An excellent idea.
I know one thing, if they did this in CA it would be a game changer. Most of the NE counties are deep red and the electoral votes would go to the Republican(hopefully conservative)candidate. Many Red counties in Northern CA and some(like OC)are in Southern CA. Splitting the electoral vote by district would take the stranglehold away from the dimwits in the National elections.
I second that emotion!
“It’s a simple numbers game. If you structure to make a “safe district” for a congressman, you’re putting your eggs in one basket, and losing presidential support in the other districts in the state. If you divide your voters to try to hold electoral votes in a number of districts, your congress critter’s hold on his/her seat becomes increasingly tenuous. “
If D’s gerrymander, the R’s get a district that is overwhelmingly R. That gobbles up a bunch of R voters with redundant votes. Then you give the D’s a district that is substantially, but not overwhelmingly D—that way they don’t waste a lot of D voters building up an 80% victory margin—winning by 57-43 is enough. If they do this consistently and cleverly, they can increase D congress critters by one or more seats in a state. Of course, some competitive districts pop out of this process; but the idea is to make D’s win 55-45 and R’s win 80-20. The programs to accomplish this are quite sophisticated and good at what they do.
What bollixes up the D’s to some extent is that the courts have mandated districts that will elect blacks. To do that, the D’s have to concentrate a bunch of D voters into one district. That has hurt the D’s over the years. It has also radicalized the black congress critters because they hold the safest seats of all—so they can be as nuts as they want and never lose an election.
The same arithmetic applies to presidential elections where the electors are selected by district.
Interestingly enough, Pennsylvania is a state that may swing to the GOP anyway in the 2012 election. Obama’s approval in Pennsylvania is hovering in the low 40’s. He loses to Mitt Romney right now. The Democrats may end up supporting this plan in order to salvage a few electoral votes for Obama next year.
It’s appealing but just imagine the gerrymandering battles that would ensue in the state capitals were this to pass. We think it’s tough now! The upside of that is that it would make more local elections more important to folks. I have never understood why people shoe up for a presidential election but can’t be bothered to vote in local and state senate and delegate races.
It’s a dumb idea. Right now, Pennsylvania is a battle-ground state that can swing a LARGE number of electoral votes either way, so it is fought over.
With this proposed change, the state’s electoral votes would almost always be more or less evenly divided. So it would have no greater electoral ‘clout’ than a state with a very low number of electors, like Wyoming.
Coming from Minnesota (a definite blue state), I’ve always been in favor of something like this.
Of our eight congressional districts, the GOP nominee could forseeably win 2-3 of them in any given Presidential election.
The Dem nominee will win that state though. But oujt of our 10 electoral votes, we could walk away with 2-3. That’s a hell of lot better than right now.
One big reason why the Democrats don't like this idea is that it puts them at a serious disadvantage today, and maybe for the foreseeable future.
The Electoral College has 538 members, which corresponds to the combined number of House seats (435) and Senate seats (100) in Congress, plus 3 electoral votes for the District of Columbia. A presidential candidate needs a majority of these electoral votes (270) to win the election.
After yesterday's two special House elections in New York and Nevada (the GOP won both of them), the Republicans now hold a 242-193 advantage in the House. If we assume that this would be a reasonably accurate estimate of how the district-based electoral votes would break down between the two parties, and if we assume that all three of the D.C. electoral votes go to the Democrats, then this gives a GOP presidential candidate about a 242-196 lead in the Electoral College before any of the 100 statewide electoral votes (two for each state) are counted. The GOP candidate would only have to win 14 of the 50 states in order to reach that 270 number.
There are now 15 states where both U.S. Senators are Republicans, so those are 30 electoral votes that are pretty firmly in GOP control (with the exception of Maine, which has two GOP Senators but is a liberal state). And by my count there are five other states that have one Senator from each party (or even two Democrats) but have been historically strong GOP states in presidential elections. These would include Alaska, Montana, North and South Dakota and Nebraska.
I don’t see a problem with that, unless you’re living in Pennsylvania (I guess). Why should Pennsylvania be any more important in a presidential election just because it is a “swing” state? In fact, one of the appeals of this kind of measure — if applied on a national basis — is that the whole concept of a “battleground state” would disappear and we’d get over all this nonsense about how states like Ohio, Iowa, and Virginia are somehow more important than others.
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