Recently the treasonous republicans (not all republicans are treasonous, but there are a few) are pushing the "Electoral College by Congressional District" plan as a means of ending Democracy (government by majority vote) in the United States of America and moving to an Oligarchy (government by the few). We will still be a Republic (government through representatives rather than direct control), just an Oligarchic Republic instead of a Democratic Republic. That's Republicans for you - out to get rid of anything with a 'Democra" prefix.
There is an interesting article about this in The Nation
They are doing this because they know they can't win the popular vote, so they want to rig the game.
The traitorous Republican controlled states are:
Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin
Note none of them are talking about doing this in the Republican strongholds of Texas or Georgia. They are not even willing to do it for the smaller republican states like Utah (which would only have given the Democrats one electoral vote because).
They only want to do this in the larger Democrat states that through gerrymandering are Republican controlled senates.
They point to Maine and Nebraska, saying that all they want to do is the copy those two states.
That is an outright lie.
There are major differences between Maine, Nebraska and those six states they want create illegal and unconstitutional methods. Virginia is the state that is furthest along in their unconstitutional idea, so I will use it as an example.
First and foremost, Maine and Nebraska are designed to be legal, constitutional and FAIR. Each state gets a number of electoral votes equal to their congressional districts, plus two (for their senators). Maine has four total electoral votes and Nebraska has five. Both states apply the two 'senatorial' electoral votes to the winner of the statewide election and give one vote to the winner of each congressional district.
BUT VIRGINIA IS NOT DOING THIS. Instead, Virginia is giving their two 'senatorial' electoral votes to whoever wins the most congressional district, not to the winner of the popular vote. This is in effect to add insult to injury. This alone is illegal. Districts don't vote, people do. You don't give out the extra votes to the winner of the most districts, you give it to the winner of the most people.
Second, because of the small size of Maine and Nebraska, you can't gerrymander extra votes. That is, you can't carve out 3 districts with 60% conservative votes, while creating one district with 90% Democrat. The real question is not why is this wrong but why is it legal. Mainly because both parties liked the certainty, and were willing to put up with the loss of one or two congressional districts when the other party happened to be in control of the state.
Virginia has 11 districts. This allows for some major gerrymandering. There are three Democrat districts in Virgina. One of the Democrats won by over 80%, the other two by over 60%. Of the eight Republican controlled districts, none won by more than 66% and only two won by over 60%. The other six were all won by between 50 and 60% The 80% democrat district (district 3) touches districts one, two, four and seven, all of whom were won by less than 60%, is clearly gerrymandered, even if you want to argue about the other two democrat ones.
In a fair world, the Democrats should have won at least one additional congressional race in Virgina, probably three or four more. Three more would have put them in the MAJORITY of Virgina. Not surprisingly because Barack Obama won the statewide election in Virginia. Virgiia has more Democrats than Republicans, the only reason the Republicans have more Virginia congressmen is gerrymandering.
Maine and Nebraska are not gerrymandered.
Third, and most important, Maine and Nebraska have so few electoral votes that even if they were gerrymandered horrendous - it is impossible to get the majority of their electoral votes without also getting the majority of their popular vote.
Because the two 'senatorial' electoral votes are almost half of Nebraska's(and exactly half of Maine's) electoral vote, they can swing the majority to at least match the state's majority vote.
Not true in Virginia with it's 11 electoral districts.
Given the current congressional record history, Virginia would get 8 Republican District electoral votes, plus 3 Democrat District electoral votes. Even if you use the Maine/Nebraska rules of two senatorial electoral votes to the popular winner (which the traitors in the GOP are not doing - they have zero ethics whatsoever), the net total would be 8 Republican Electoral votes vs 5 Democrat Electoral Votes.
Virginia's law would make that happen in every election until the
GOP's old white population died out - or more likely was murdered in the armed
revolution they are inciting.
Note, there has been exactly two cases in all of America's history where the guy that won the popular vote did not get the majority of the state's electoral vote. The first was in 1860 - New Jersey decided to give the Republican Lincoln 4 electoral votes and 3 to Douglas despite the fact that Douglas beat Lincoln by more than 4,500 votes (source) Exactly how the GOP convinced people to do this is unclear, the records are not around after 150 years.
One year later the civil war started - in main part because Lincoln was elected. I am not saying that New Jersey's faithless act caused the war - just that it is a very bad sign when we want to repeat it.
The second case in the 1960's when Kennedy was running against Nixon. While Kennedy won popular vote in the state of Alabama, the state Democrats party did not like him. So they put up 'unsworn' electors, who, while they were Democrats, then went and voted for Nixon. Of the 11 electors - all democrats, only five voted for Kennedy. (source) Again, this was due to racial factors - the southerns hated the Civil Rights Act.
Note electors voting against the wishes of their constituents is in fact not at all uncommon prior to 1980. It happened ALL the time before Reagan. After Reagan, it pretty much never happened again. But it was a faithless act by the elector, not a state law that did this.
Oh, if you wondering why I keep saying "Unconstitutional", read the Constitution's 14th Amendment, section two:
"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of
persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right
to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and
Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the
Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such
State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States,
or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the
whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."
The 'in any way abridged bit is what makes these 'electoral districts' schemes unconstitutional. By law, this reduces the basis of representation, i.e the congressional districts AND the electoral votes shall be reduced.
Virginia's has 13 electoral votes, at least 8 of which should go democrat. Their scheme to reduce that to 3 is a clear reduction of 5 votes. As such, Virginia should legally be punished by the removal of 3 congressional districts (for proposing an electoral vote scheme based on gerrymandering) and 5 electoral votes (the extra 2 electoral votes because they also wanted the senatorial votes to go to the highest electoral winner, as opposed to the popular vote winner.
Virginians should sue the state, under the 14th amendment to eliminate those 3 congressional and 5 electoral votes.
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