There's been a pretty strong reaction by some bloggers on the Internet today (see here and here) because state legislators in Pennsylvania are considering legislation to change Pennsylvania's electoral college votes from winner-take-all to a congressional district system: one electoral college vote for each district won, plus two votes for winning the state at-large (this conforms to the Constitutional structure --- total representatives + Senators --- of the state EC vote distribution). The partisan implications are obvious; whichever presidential candidate was likely to win the state under the at-large system will come out a loser, as at least some proportion of the congressional districts will give their vote to the other candidate. This is likely to hurt the Democrats, as they have won Pennsylvania in recent elections and, at any rate, Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes (back then 21) are part of the math of most plausible Obama maps.
On Electoral College by Congressional District
On Electoral College by Congressional…
On Electoral College by Congressional District
There's been a pretty strong reaction by some bloggers on the Internet today (see here and here) because state legislators in Pennsylvania are considering legislation to change Pennsylvania's electoral college votes from winner-take-all to a congressional district system: one electoral college vote for each district won, plus two votes for winning the state at-large (this conforms to the Constitutional structure --- total representatives + Senators --- of the state EC vote distribution). The partisan implications are obvious; whichever presidential candidate was likely to win the state under the at-large system will come out a loser, as at least some proportion of the congressional districts will give their vote to the other candidate. This is likely to hurt the Democrats, as they have won Pennsylvania in recent elections and, at any rate, Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes (back then 21) are part of the math of most plausible Obama maps.