I saw this on Maddow tonight and she gave me a big laugh.
Dem Watkins was at the big Obama/MLK celebration instead of there voting against this.
Perfect day for a vote.
Hey, it was not a paid holiday for me!
I assume that you saw that the VA Senate approved, on a 20-19 vote (with one Democrat absent because he went to Obama’s inauguration), a new state senate redistricting map that turns the Democrat gerrymander (under which the GOP barely got a 20-20 tie in 2011 despite winning the statewide state senate vote by 57%-40%) into a Republican gerrymander (where the GOP likely will have at least a 26-14 majority after the 2015 elections), but also creates a sixth black-majority district. The bill moved to the Republican House of Delegates, and if the Delegates go along with it, to Gov. McDonnell’s desk. Most VA Republicans outside the Senate have expressed disappointment with the tactics used (they were necessary because GOP Lt. Gov. Bolling had told the Senate leader that he was opposed to the measure), but I think it will be approved and signed into law. Democrats will challenge it both before the Justice Department (VA is subject to Section 5 preclearance under the VRA, unless SCOTUS declares Section 5 preclearance unconstitutional later this year) and in state court (the VA constitution says that redistricting must take place in years that end in 1, but it doesn’t say that no other redistricting may occur during the decade, and in fact the congressional map wasn’t drawn until 2012 and technical amendments to redistricting plans have been approved in the past), and I won’t hazard a guess as to how it will all turn out. Here’s a good article on the bill: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/va-republicans-move-on-redistricting-draws-criticism/2013/01/22/f7645ee8-64b9-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html
Well, the VA Senate did another interesting thing today. A Senate sub-committee approved a bill to change the allocation of EVs from winner-takes-all to allocation by CD. It will now go to a full committee, and it appears to be on its way to approval by party-line vote (unless Lt. Gov. Bolling, who is considering running for governor as an Independent this year, votes against it). The bill would establish a ME/NE method of allocation, with an interesting twist: instead of giving the extra two EVs to the statewide winner, it would give them to the winner of the most CDs in the state. So had the system been in place in 2012 (when Romney carried 7 CDs and Obama carried 4 (one extremely narrowly)), Romney would have won 9 of VA’s 13 EVs, as opposed to 7 of 13 under a ME/NE system or 0 under winner-takes-all. One thing I hadn’t considered was that ME and NE aren’t subject to Section 5 of the VRA, and that the Justice Department may try to block such a system being adopted in VA. Here’s the story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-lawmakers-move-to-change-states-system-for-apportioning-presidential-electoral-votes/2013/01/23/f254adb8-657c-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html
As I posted on FR a week or so ago (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2977499/posts?page=56#56, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2977499/posts?page=65#65 and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2977499/posts?page=74#74), if VA, PA, OH, MI, WI and FL adopt a ME/NE EV apportionment system, the GOP would be in the catbird seat to win the White House in 2016 and beyond. I had not considered an allocation method such as the one in the VA bill, but if all six states were to adopt that method, then Romney would have received 280 EVs in 2012 instead of 268 had the six states used the ME/NE system or 306 with all six using winner takes all. I can’t think of any downside to having all six states allocate EVs in the way that VA is contemplating.