The Big Rig

The Republicans tried to keep as many voters in Democratic constituencies as possible from voting for President in 2012 by passing voting registration laws that placed undue burdens on blacks, old people, and students. Democrats outfoxed Republicans, though, by either suing to invalidate or limit such laws or, in many cases, simply complying with them - people took advantage of what few early voting days there were, got the photo IDs they needed, and waited in line longer than usual to cast a ballot. And President Obama won.

Once again, though, Republicans are trying to undermine the will of the people. Faced with changing demographics and a shrinking base, the GOP is pushing laws in several swing states that would change the way electoral votes are awarded in presidential elections. Rather than award every electoral vote in a given state to the candidate who wins the most popular votes, electoral votes would be awarded proportionally, by congressional district - each state gets electors equal to the number of representatives and senators it sends to Congress, and the District of Columbia gets three electoral votes because it would have one House member and two senators if it were a state - with the two electoral votes equal to the two senators awarded on a statewide basis. Maine and Nebraska already do this. Well, what would be so bad about other states doing that?

Quite a few things, actually. First of all, the proportional system would give small populations in rural congressional districts more power than the residents of urban and suburban districts. The Republicans, particularly Reince Preibus, the evil goon running the Republican National Committee, insist that this would put rural (Republican) House districts on equal footing with urban and suburban (Democratic) districts, but it would theoretically thwart the will of the majority. Even if 65 percent of the voters in, say, Pennsylvania, voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, the Republican candidate could win 13 of the state's 20 electoral votes - 65 percent - if he carries 13 out of its 18 House districts. Second, the districts don't reflect the political reality of the vote. Republicans aggressively gerrymandered House districts after winning control of many states in 2010 to ensure themselves a majority in the House for at least a decade - so what if Democratic House candidates actually received more votes nationwide in 2012? - and so this proposed system of electoral vote allocation would give the GOP a disproportional share of electoral votes. So, if this proportional system were set up nationwide before 2012, Mitt Romney would have won 276 electoral votes to 262, despite losing the popular vote. (Six states currently dominated by Republicans - Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin - are currently considering the idea. With proportional allocation of electors in just these states, Obama still would have won the 2012 election, but not by much - 272 to 266.) Third, even if Democrats could still win the White House under a nationwide proportional electoral-vote allocation system, Republicans are only interested in changing the rules in a handful of states to rig the system in their favor; they're certainly not interested in proportionally allocating electors in solidly Republican states like Texas, where a Democratic presidential candidate could pick up electors.

Right now the focus is on Virginia, and not just because it's the first state to actively take up such an idea. The proportional elector allocation bill being proposed in Richmond would have its two statewide electors awarded to whoever wins the most House districts, not the most statewide votes. This bill could pass as early as next week, though it's actually run into Republican, not Democratic, opposition. (Virginia Republicans must be envisioning the shoe being on the other foot; what if Democrats tried this in a Democratic House district-majority state?)

Oh yeah, this is all perfectly legal. The Constitution gives the states the right to choose and allocate electors any way they want, hence Maine and Nebraska award their electors proportionally. But Maine is so solidly Democratic and Nebraska is so solidly Republican, one candidate usually wins every electoral vote in either state anyway. (Ironically, Obama was able to pick off an electoral vote in Nebraska from John McCain in 2008 because he won the congressional district including Omaha.) But if these changes become reality elsewhere, voting rights activists will undoubtedly sue and demonstrate in the courts that these rules undermine and invalidate the popular majority vote and so disenfranchises voters. They should have a pretty good case.

I don't know how we can improve the presidential election system to make it fair and equitable. The easiest thing to do would be to just abolish the Electoral College, but that will never happen because the system as it currently stands allows small states to cast the deciding electoral ballots in a close election and thus become more relevant. Small states like that. Besides, without an Electoral College, and with the possibility of a presidential candidate getting the most popular votes without a majority (especially if there's a strong third-party challenge, like with Ross Perot in 1992), how could the top finisher legitimize a victory?

I would suggest a runoff between the top two finishers if no candidate gets a minimum popular majority of 50 percent plus one, but who wants to extend the already lengthy campaign season?