As discussed in a prior post, I favor the adoption of a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College for the election of our President and Vice President and instead to have direct election of those offices by national popular vote. But that amendment has not been adopted. Thus, we are stuck with the Electoral College for the presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.
In anticipation of 2016 the Republican Party is concocting a flimflam scheme to rig the Electoral College so that a Republican candidate could be elected president even though he or she was a clear loser in the national popular vote.
This scheme is being organized by the Republican State Leadership Committee and its Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP.
In states whose legislatures are controlled by Republicans, but whose voters favored President Obama in 2012, Republican legislators and party officials are developing legislation to allocate those states’ presidential electoral votes by congressional districts. Those districts already have been gerrymandered by those same Republican-controlled state legislatures to favor Republican congressional candidates. As a result of this gerrymandering, Republicans now have a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives even though Democratic candidates for Congress collectively got 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents in the 2012 election.
The result of such changes, if adopted, would be to reduce the Electoral College votes of a Democratic Party presidential candidate who had the most popular votes in such states and in the nation as a whole. Under some scenarios, it could even result in the election of a Republican presidential candidate who lost the national popular vote.
The lesson for Democrats, liberals, progressives as well as those who believe in the principles of democracy: be vigilant. Identify any such efforts in your states. Publicly oppose those measures. Lobby for state legislative opposition to them.
This outrageous GOP campaign is being investigated by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and by the Associated Press.