[EL] electoral college piece

[Michael McDonald]

No need to further speculate about Virginia changing its electoral college
allocation rule. Gov. McDonnell came out against it, as well as two
Republican state senators.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/bob-mcdonnell-electoral-college_n_2
553197.html 

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

703-993-4191 (office)
e-mail:  mmcdon at gmu.edu               
web:     http://elections.gmu.edu
twitter: @ElectProject     

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick
Hasen
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 4:37 PM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] electoral college piece

“Democrats, Don’t Freak Out! Why fears that Republicans will gerrymander the
Electoral College are overblown” 
Posted on January 25, 2013 1:36 pm by Rick Hasen 
Slate has published my new commentary.  It begins:
Sound the alarm! Democrats are on high alert! Josh Marshall calls it a big,
big deal. Eric Kleefeld says if the blueprint were in place last November,
the GOP would have “stolen 2012 for Mitt Romney.” Steve Benen of the Maddow
Blog calls it a “democracy-crushing scheme” showing that “the will of the
voters and the consent of the governed are now antiquated concepts that
Republicans no longer value.”
They’re all talking about potential plans to change the method for electing
the president in states like Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—states
that have Republican legislatures and governors but voted for Obama in 2012.
Instead of awarding all of the state’s Electoral College votes to the
presidential candidate getting the most votes in each of these states, under
the proposed plans most of the Electoral College votes would be awarded to
the winner in each congressional district—and thanks to Republican
gerrymandering of those districts, such a scheme would be a windfall for
Republicans.
This plan would be deeply concerning if Republicans were really going to
enact it. But the same self-interest that is leading Republicans to consider
this move is also going to lead most of them to abandon it almost
everywhere. The Great Democratic Freak-out is unjustified. But it is not
without its usefulness, because it reminds wavering Republicans what they
will face if they go down the road of unilateral Electoral College reform.

Posted in electoral college | Comments Off |
-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org