The Republican Plan to End Democracy in the United States

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http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/on-the-trail/the-gop-s-electoral-college-scheme-20121217
National Journal said:
The GOP's Electoral College Scheme
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By Reid Wilson
December 17, 2012 | 6:00 a.m.


RICK BLOOM
Election 2012 in Virginia, a swing state. Swanson Middle School, a polling place in Arlington, VA.
Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party's path to the Oval Office.
Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party's majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.
Already, two states -- Maine and Nebraska -- award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.
But if more reliably blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were to award their electoral votes proportionally, Republicans would be able to eat into what has become a deep Democratic advantage.
All three states have given the Democratic nominee their electoral votes in each of the last six presidential elections. Now, senior Republicans in Washington are overseeing legislation in all three states to end the winner-take-all system.
Obama won all three states in 2008, handing him 46 electoral votes because of the winner-take-all system. Had electoral votes been awarded by district, Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have cut into that lead. Final election results show that Romney won nine of Michigan's 14 districts, five of eight in Wisconsin, and at least 12 of 18 in Pennsylvania. Allocate the two statewide votes in each state to Obama and that means Romney would have emerged from those three Democratic states with 26 electoral votes, compared with just 19 for Obama (and one district where votes are still being counted).
Republicans are able to contemplate such a bold plan because of their electoral success in 2010, when the party won control of state legislative chambers and the governorships in all three states, giving them total control over the levers of state government.
"If you did the calculation, you'd see a massive shift of electoral votes in states that are blue and fully [in] red control," said one senior Republican taking an active role in pushing the proposal. "There's no kind of autopsy and outreach that can grab us those electoral votes that quickly."
The proposals, the senior GOP official said, are likely to come up in each state's legislative session in 2013. Bills have been drafted, and legislators are talking to party bosses to craft strategy. Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has briefed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Chief of Staff Jeff Larson on his state's proposal. The proposal "is not being met with the 'We can't do that' answer. It's being met with 'I've already got a bill started,' " the official said.
Republican state legislators are motivated to act after Romney's loss. And the party lost legislative seats in all three states, adding urgency to pass the measures before voters head to the polls in 2014.
Tweaks of electoral-vote rules are hardly unprecedented, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. State legislatures routinely changed Electoral College allocation rules in the early years of the Republic; the political fallout then can inform present-day lawmakers considering the changes.
"State legislative elections became tantamount to the presidential election in a state. Local issues were put aside for presidential politics," McDonald said. "These states legislators thus risk the nationalization of their state politics, to the detriment of their personal careers. State legislators learned that once they fixed the Electoral College rules, national politics no longer dominated state elections."
In the long run, Republican operatives say they would like to pursue similar Electoral College reform in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Obama won all three states, but Romney won a majority of the congressional districts in each state.
Any changes to the allocation of Electoral College votes would have a major impact on each party's path to the White House. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have given Democrats their collective 246 electoral votes in each of the last six elections. That virtually forces Republicans to run the swing-state table.
But rewriting the rules would dramatically shrink or eliminate the Democratic advantage, because of the way House districts are drawn. The decennial redistricting process has dumped huge percentages of Democratic voters into some urban districts, while Republican voters are spread over a wider number of districts, giving the party an advantage. This year, Democratic House candidates won more than 1 million more votes than Republican candidates, but Republicans won 33 more seats.
And if Republicans go ahead with their plan, Democrats don't have the option of pushing back. After the 2010 wave, Democrats control all levers of government in only one state -- West Virginia -- that Romney won this year. Some consistently blue presidential states have Republican legislatures; the reverse is not true.
Some Republicans acknowledge that the party would open itself up to charges of political opportunism, but that they would frame the proposal as a chance to make the system more fair.
"With the frustration of the current system—and the fact that almost everyone would agree proportional or CD is more representative and maybe more fair than the current winner-take-all—Republicans have a strong, righteous argument," Anuzis said. "However, the motivation would be viewed as being purely political since it hasn’t been done before."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...away-votes-from-blue-states-virginia-edition/
Washington Post said:
How to siphon votes away from blue states, Virginia edition
Posted by Brad Plumer on January 24, 2013 at 9:10 am


To recap: In most states, presidential elections are fairly simple. Whichever candidate garners the most votes wins all of that state’s electoral votes. There are two tiny exceptions (Maine and Nebraska), but that’s typically how it works. President Obama won a majority of votes in Virginia in 2012, so he got all 13 of its electoral votes and carried the state.

The future of the electoral college?

But some lawmakers are now trying to change that. On Wednesday, a subcommittee in the Virginia state Senate approved a bill, authored by Sen. Bill Carrico (R) that would split the state’s electoral votes between different candidates.
Here’s how this would work: Each presidential candidate would get a certain number of electoral votes depending on how many congressional districts he or she carried in Virginia. On top of that, an extra two electoral votes would be awarded to whichever candidate carries the most districts in total.
As Dave Weigel points out, this would have altered the results of the 2012 election. Barack Obama, recall, carried Virginia with 51 percent of the popular vote. But under Carrico’s system, Obama would have received just four electoral votes while Romney would have received nine. In other words, Obama would have received 150,000 more ballots and still lost the state decisively.
Not surprisingly, there are a plenty of objections this scheme, but let’s go with the two big ones:
1) The political objection. Democrats argue that this is a pure partisan power grab by the GOP. That’s certainly possible, although note that Virginia was a deep-red state for five decades before Obama came along in 2008, so this plan could conceivably end up hurting Republicans in the future.

But there’s also the precedent to consider. It’s true that splitting Virginia’s electoral votes wouldn’t have affected the 2012 election at all. Obama would have still won. But it’s worth noting that GOP lawmakers in other blue states — including Pennsylvania and Ohio — have been mulling similar changes to their electoral colleges. (Note that Democrats can’t really retaliate: West Virginia is the only red state where they control the legislature.)
These tweaks could add up: As Ari Berman points out, if Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Pennsylvania had all adopted this vote-splitting plan, and nothing else had changed, Romney would have garnered 270 electoral votes and won the presidency.
2) The principled objection. What the Virginia legislature is contemplating isn’t illegal. States can divvy up their electoral votes however they want. Nebraska and Maine both do it (although in practice these states rarely end up splitting their votes). What’s different here is that Virginia is a big state with heavily gerrymandered districts.
Gerrymandering, after all, helps explain why Obama won a majority of votes in Virginia but only carried four of its eleven congressional districts. Most of the state’s Democratic voters are packed into a small handful of districts (right). This isn’t unusual. Politicians in many states and in both parties engage in this sort of line-drawing. But under a plan like Carrico’s, presidential elections would now be heavily affected by whichever state parties happen to be in power when district maps are redrawn. Gerrymandering would influence presidential races, too.
Now, it’s not clear yet that Carrico’s bill will actually pass the full Virginia state Senate or the House of Delegates — at least Republican thinks it’s a dubious plan, and her opposition could be enough to kill the bill. But if it does pass, some observers are wondering if a scheme like this could ultimately undermine the whole electoral college system. “Gerrymandering the [electoral college],” notes Josh Barro, “will turn it into an unstable institution that will eventually have to be abolished.”
Further reading:
–Dave Weigel dissects Carrico’s argument that his bill would give Virginia’s rural districts a greater voice.
–Tim Noah’s argument for abolishing the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote.
–The last round of redistricting is likely to keep the House in Republican hands for the next decade.

Democracy is under assault in America. The culprit? The Republican party. Oh sure, the Republicans will tell you that their plan to change the Electoral College will bring more fairness to the system, but consider the facts here:

1) They are only proposing making these changes in States Obama won in 2012

2) Electoral College appointment by congressional district would result, in almost every State they are proposing this plan, in the Republican candidate winning the majority of electoral votes in each State, even though they lost the popular vote in every one of these States. Sometimes by almost 10% of the vote! If this system had been in place in the 2012 Election, either Nationwide or just in the States the GOP is pushing the plan, Mitt Romney would be President right now. After losing the popular vote by millions of votes!

The Republicans have used gerrymandering to subvert the will of the people in the House of Representatives, and now they are planning on bringing this system to the Presidency.
This is nothing less then vote rigging. Politicians choosing their voters isn't democracy. They are attempting to create a one party state here. A Republican Dictatorship.
 
This is how we fixed this problem here in Canada

Early in Canadian history, both the federal and provincial levels used gerrymandering to try to maximise partisan power. When Alberta and Saskatchewan were admitted to Confederation in 1905, their original district boundaries were set forth in the respective Alberta and Saskatchewan Acts. These boundaries had been devised by federal Liberal cabinet members to ensure the election of provincial Liberal governments.

Since responsibility for drawing federal and provincial electoral boundaries was handed over to independent agencies, this problem has largely been eliminated at these levels of government. Manitoba was the first province to authorise a non-partisan group to define constituency boundaries in the 1950s. In 1964, the federal government delegated the drawing of boundaries for national seats to the "arm's length" Elections Canada.

So there are solutions.. but is there enough will to implement one?
 
"State legislative elections became tantamount to the presidential election in a state. Local issues were put aside for presidential politics," McDonald said. "These states legislators thus risk the nationalization of their state politics, to the detriment of their personal careers. State legislators learned that once they fixed the Electoral College rules, national politics no longer dominated state elections."

Sounds like an easy way to vote themselves out of super majorities in those states.

As downtown has said many many times, local elections matter guys. Vote in them.
 
Little do they know it but if the Republicans do this then they may inadvertently bring about the end of the electoral college:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among several U.S. states. States passing this interstate compact have agreed to replace their current rules regarding the apportionment of presidential electors with rules guaranteeing the election of the presidential candidate with the most popular votes in all fifty states and Washington, D.C. The agreement is to go into effect only when the participating states that have joined the compact together have an absolute majority in the Electoral College. In the subsequent presidential election, the participating states would award all their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, who as a result would win the presidency by winning more than half of electoral votes. Until the compact is joined by states with a majority of electoral votes, all states will continue to award their electoral votes in their current manner.

As of April 2012, the compact has been joined by eight states and the District of Columbia (see map); their 132 combined electoral votes amount to 24.5% of the Electoral College and 49% of the 270 votes needed for the compact to go into effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

Thus I am fully supportive of this. If Penn, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Florida went ahead and did this I think it would achieve the Compact and bring about the National Popular Vote.
 
ace99, how does gerrymandering help that movement? (which I support)

Well what Republicans are proposing here isn't redrawing the district lines, but revising how electors are apportioned. As you know we have a winner-takes-all system when it comes to the Presidential election in most states. Whichever candidate wins the popular vote of a particular wins all the electoral votes of that state. The two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska (right?) which apportion based on who wins each particular district. So Democrats can usually pick up about 1 electoral vote from Nebraska and Republicans can pick up 1 from Maine, (out of 3 each). So it's somewhat proportional.

So what Republicans in these blue states are proposing is to adopt the Maine-Nebraska method and apportion electors based on districts. Take Virginia it has what like 13 electoral votes right? So if it was assigned proportionally by district, then it have been split between Obama and Romney, with Obama taking I think 3-4 and Romney the rest. Likely would be an intensification of gerrymandering battles for a time.
 
There's nothing principally wrong with changing the EC to proportional distribution, but an electoral system should be uniform, and this is obviously being done for partisan advantage.
 
It's stuff like this that makes me doubt if I'll ever vote for a Republican for anything. :(

Little do they know it but if the Republicans do this then they may inadvertently bring about the end of the electoral college:
...
Thus I am fully supportive of this. If Penn, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Florida went ahead and did this I think it would achieve the Compact and bring about the National Popular Vote.

Yeah, but...

States join the compact by adopting it as a state law.

That's a problem. PA, VA, et al., aren't going to adopt that while their legislators are trying to abuse the electoral college.

There's nothing principally wrong with changing the EC to proportional distribution, but an electoral system should be uniform, and this is obviously being done for partisan advantage.

Agreed. If they simply wanted to go proportional, I wouldn't object. Don't NE and ME already do that?

Although, I do kind of like the electoral college. It doesn't look like the most egalitarian system, but it does ensure that any President wins with substantial depth and breadth of support. The compartmentalization is also nice. I can't imagine a 2000-style crisis that necessitates a nation-wide recount. :suicide:
 
The odd thing is that Ohio and Florida were both more Republican than the country as a whole in 2012. Had there been a swing of even 1 point, this plan would be costing Republicans votes in Florida.
 
Bobby Jindall tells Republicans to "stop being the stupid party" and "talk like adults":

"We must stop being the stupid party. I'm serious. It's time for a new Republican party that talks like adults. It's time for us to articulate our plans and visions for America in real terms. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. We’ve had enough of that."

"We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters...We have to stop dumbing down our ideas and stop reducing everything to mindless slogans and tag lines for 30-second ads. We must be willing to provide details in describing our views."

"We are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, or big anything….We are a populist party and need to make that clear."
Good luck convincing Republicans of all that, much less everybody else.





 
There's nothing principally wrong with changing the EC to proportional distribution, but an electoral system should be uniform, and this is obviously being done for partisan advantage.

The problem is that it's not really proportional. Republicans are trying to get 1 district = 1 vote, when districts have wildly varying populations. So there could be cases where they lose the popular vote in a state, badly, but overwhelmingly win the electoral votes.
 
The problem is that it's not really proportional. Republicans are trying to get 1 district = 1 vote, when districts have wildly varying populations. So there could be cases where they lose the popular vote in a state, badly, but overwhelmingly win the electoral votes.
That would be the case in almost every State they are pushing this. Under this system, Romney would have won the electoral votes in these States something like 60-40, even though he lost the popular vote in all of them. The Republicans have heavily gerrymandered large swaths of the country.
 
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