Quote:
Originally posted by John D Harris:
There could be some changes made to the Electoral College, I personaly like the way Maine does it, the winner of the popular vote gets the 2 EC votes from the State representing the State's Senators, the EC votes representing the State's House members are given to the Candidate that wins that Congressional district. But looking at the map of the counties that Voted for Who or whom. President Bush would have won in an Electoral College landslide.
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Hi guys, long time, no visit.
JD, you cannot assume that Bush would have had an electoral landslide under the "Maine" (also used in Nebraska) Electoral Vote system. There's a major downside to this system.
Gerrymandering.
For those not familiar with the term, "gerrymandering" is the process of manipulating the boundaries of districts (in this case, congressional districts) for the political gain of the party controlling the process. For example, in Massachusetts, the Dems have a total hammerlock on the state legislature. As a result they draw congressional district boundaries that favor their party the most. In Mass., they do this by having about 6 of their 10 districts with portions of those districts in various Boston neighborhoods. The effect of this is to make these 6 districts even more solidly democrat than they are already. This same tactic is used in most democratically constrolled states, i.e. using urban neighborhoods to overwhelm suburban and rural voters.
OTOH, in GOP controlled states, the republicans now use a strategy that is almost the exact opposite. They concentrate urban voters into purely democrat urban districts, while leaving the suburban and rural voters in districts of their own. This strategy was first used in Georgia in the early 90's with great succcess.
If electoral votes were assigned nationwide by congressional districts, there would be even more pressure to gerrymander hosue districts to assure predetermined outcomes. Instead of looking at battleground "states", you'd end up looking at a few battleground house districts, since a large majority of house districts would have almost certain pre-determined outcomes.
Also, if people didn't like the questionable Tom Delay maneuver down in Texas last year (this year?) of redistricting Texes' house districts a 2nd time in this decade, just think what could happen with house district based electoral votes. It sounds like a total nightmare to me.
No, I do not think that this is a great idea. The advantage of winner take all is that it is based on STATES. States have completely static borders. I do not know when the last time was that a state's borders were changed. This creates a very stable system. Divvying up congressional districts is an invitation for a constant political nightmare.