Changing the method of awarding electoral votes in swing states

slate.com ^ | 9/13/2011 | David Weigel

[zaker99]

Laura Olson reports on the happenings in Harrisburg, where Republicans now control all of the branches of government:

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is trying to gather support to change the state's "winner-takes-all" approach for awarding electoral votes. Instead, he's suggesting that Pennsylvania dole them out based on which candidate wins each of the 18 congressional districts, with the final two going to the contender with the most votes statewide.

In other reports, Pileggi sounds awfully sanguine about the effect this would have on PA as a swing state. Why even bring that up? Pennsylvania is typically a closely-divided state, and while it's gone Democratic in every election since 1992, it's been heavily campaigned-in every year.

[pghbjugop]

Photo ID may help a little, but professional voter fraud is enacted by those who work inside the polls. One poll worker can simply vote as many times as needed. Second, even if you have a photo ID, they would simply go up and down through town and vote at each poll. Do you think they bother to get a bus load of people to go to one poll and vote only once? Rules only matter if those in the polls enforce the rules. WI has same day voter registration, so when they bused in from MI to knock off the state senator in the recall election, do you really think they went through all that hassle to only vote once. Voter ID is a feel good start, but would do little to stop fraud

[redangus]

You are wrong on one point. Today many states are controlled by the votes of one or two large metro areas. Ohio is a good example. All you have to do is win Cleveland, Columbus and Cincy and you can win the state. If you allotted by CD those cities would lose their impact in terms of the electoral college. Each of those cities probably has parts of a couple CDs which also extend into more GOP friendly suburbs. They might still carry their districts but the would have a much smaller impact on the total allotment of Ohio’s total EV vote.

It is not a guarantee of victory, but it really does change the electoral landscape. I seem to remember we won big in the House races in 2008 and held up pretty well this year while losing the statewide races for pres and senate in many states because of the inordinate influence of the large metro areas of the battleground states. I think if you look at the R vs D breakdown in the House right now you would have to say Romney would be pretty happy with that number.

[HamiltonJay]

Romney wouldn’t have won 13 EC votes in PA.. by district with state winner getting the senate votes Romney would have gotten 8 votes... And then he would have lost 13 in Florida (assuming he wins it) and only gotten 16... So Romney instead of being up 9 votes (29 for florida, losing 20 in PA) winds up down 1 25 for O, 24 for Romney.

This isn’t hard to understand its basic bath folks. This would not have won the election for Romney, and in fact his EC total in this particular election would have likely been WORSE! Because he would have lost more votes in FL/VA/NC than he would have gained in PA, OH etc.

This is a false premise, and silly.

[Churchillspirit]

Rather like arranging the deck chairs on The Titanic.

Unless the ship of state is prevented from sinking, fine tuning is a waste of time.

[HamiltonJay]

Allocating by Congressional District doesn’t change this.. Congressional districts are based on populations and are roughly equivalent. So take PA for example there are 18 districts, Obama won flat out 10 of them, Romney 8... Same is true in OHIO. Obama won more of the congressional districts.. so the idea this change would change the outcome is silly.

At best you get the EC closer to popular vote, but you don’t counter the denser populated regions, because the denser populated areas have more congressional districts.

Look at SE PA for example.. the Philly metro area for example... http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/PA then look at the rest of the state.. See how many districts are bunched together there. You aren’t changing anything with this scenario other than lessening the EC Sentoral votes effect. This model does NOT counter the larger cities overriding rural areas..

And in spite of your protests, your supposition is false Columbus, Cleveland and Cincy combined dont even add up to 1/11th of the states population. In PA, MI and IL yes you have supercities who can pull the entire state.. Philly, Detroid and Chicago.. but OH, IA, WI, IN do not get overrun by cities...

Those states were lost, like it or not, not because of the cities, in fact, Romney won BACK the suburbs!! Why the Republicans lost appears to simply be GOP GOTV crashed and burned!! Obama lost 10 Million votes from 4 years ago, and GOP couldn’t even get the same number of voters to the polls that McCain got in 08... Need to stop making excuses and just deal with reality.

EC isn’t the problem, Sandy clearly stopped the momentum, and the GOP GOTV was ineffective. Sad but true.

[bmwcyle]

It has to help or they would not have spent so much money fighting it.

[CommerceComet]

Ultimately, it would feed into the argument that the Electoral College itself should be abolished.

Possibly, but it might be that reasonable compromise between the current EC system and the popular vote option which would quell the popular vote movement.

Such a proposal would certainly change the dynamics of campaigning. Instead of 50 individual races like now, there would be 438 separate races (or 1 race if the popular vote option were enacted). In a state such as mine, Kansas, we'd probably get some attention. The state's 6 electoral votes were safely in the Romney camp. If there were a CD allocation of EV, the third district containing Johnson County (KC suburb) and Douglas Country (Lawrence) could be in play. So we wouldn't have been completely ignored by the two campaigns.

[Cowman]

While I understand your sentiment, by your logic no one serving in the armed forces would be allowed to vote either

I said that military personnel would be exempted from the ban but government union thugs would not. and why would we want anyone who has a vested interest and able to vote themselves largess in letting them do so? If a teacher in a government school wants to vote they should teach in a private school. If a bureaucrat wants to vote they should get a job picking peaches or changing tires or something else that would be useful and not destructive.

It's the only way I can see of solving the problem of the "professional voter"

[Valpal1]

All I know is that I am tired of being disenfranchised by the urban districts of my state, who get basically get to change the vote of my district and award our EV to their candidate.

There are many states like Oregon that would split its EVs between the R’s and D’s rather than giving them all to the D’s.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio would all shave EV’s off to R’s.

[Conscience of a Conservative]

I would exempt active duty military from this as the military is one of the few things allowed in the Constitution

What about postal workers? That's allowed in the Constitution.

Also, the Constitution allows your example (schoolteachers) as well. The Constitution does not allow the Federal government to run schools, hire teachers, etc., but it certainly does allow the states to do so. And because teachers are paid by the states (and localities), rather than by the Federal government, what is the justification for prohibiting them from voting in Federal elections?

Also, what about people who work for defense contractors (and others who may be employed by a private entity, but whose paycheck depends entirely on a government contract of some sort)?

Your plan is one that sounds nice in theory, but is practically unworkable.

[Tuxedo]

I hear what you are trying to say, but let’s see if someone can process the whole USA this way and provide the aggregate electoral vote total.