"Last winter, shortly after President Obama won his second term in office, many Republicans rallied behind a pair of election-rigging plans designed to make it virtually impossible for a Democrat to win White House again. Though the two plans differ in important ways, the crux of both plans is to rig the Electoral College by requiring blue states to award a significant portion of their electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates — all while ensuring that red states will award 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican as well. Though these election-rigging plans appeared dead after a wave of Republican officials came out against them, one of them has just returned to life in California.
On November 22, a man named Hal Nickle filed a proposed ballot initiative in California which would change the way that state allocates electoral votes to ensure that a large chunk of California's 55 electors go to the GOP, even though Californians consistently prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans. Rather than allocating all of California's electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, as nearly all states currently award their votes, the election-rigging initiative would allocate the states votes proportionally according to the percentage of votes won by each candidate. Thus, if this plan had been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 37.12 percent of California's electors — adding 20 to his overall total."*
"Awarding California's electoral votes based on the outcome in each congressional district is unfair, harmful to democratic precepts and a blatant political power grab. Such ridiculous thinking should be abandoned."
ReplyDeleteEditorial Board
Stockton Record
"A proposed change... in the way California's votes are allocated in the presidential election might have a sheen of fairness, but it is nakedly partisan and profoundly subversive of our constitutional system."
Editorial Board
Orange County Register
"California shouldn't unilaterally switch methods of determining how it apportions electoral votes. Any change must be applied equally to all states. Otherwise, it's naked politics masquerading as reform."
Editorial Board
San Jose Mercury News
"The fight isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats. It is about whether to twist the nation’s system of electing presidents to give one party an unfair advantage. No principled elected official, or voter, of either party should support that."
Editorial Board
New York Times