FroMan's Journal: Red States and Blue Cities

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_electoral26.3e41beb.html

This has potential to change things greatly if it were to take. I recall in 2000 the left was absolutely upset about how the electoral college works because Bush won. They demanded change, and were thinking that they would like to change states to have all of their electoral voes changed to the winner of a hypothetical national popular vote. The left hates this idea of splitting the votes by district though.

It would not change any action I take by voting since I am not in California it could affect presidential elections. So, it is an interesting thing to look at.

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/Election2004textured.gif

Here is a map broken down by districts. One of the remarkable things to notice is the fully blue areas tend to be cities and rural areas tend to be red. Certainly there is some variation.

http://www.race2004.net/maps-2004/mapnader.gif

Here is a map broken down by state to compare how the electoral votes were actually cast in 2004.

Now, looking at both of these maps shows that there could be some large gains for the republicans over all. Specifically California would be a huge gain by breaking up a normally democratic state of 55 electorial votes into ~33/22. Other states like Michigan, Illinois, and even New York could give large gains of up to 10 votes per state.

The democrats would likely fair better in smaller states, such as in the south west, along the mississippi, and even the south. But by each state, they would gain fewer districts by gaurentee. And ofcourse the two from each state would likely still go to republicans.

Now, one thing to remember when looking at these maps is that they do not necessarily show how things would have gone. Just as I mentioned above about a hypothetical national popular vote, these district maps are also rather hypothetical. Some folks will currently not vote because they may live in a particularly slanted state currently and their vote will effectively not be counted since their state is pretty much decided. The same would happen at a similar level if it were districts which voted for their own electoral vote.

All the above is guesswork at what might happen, but regardless of that, is it a good idea? If we could ignore today's ramifications, does it make sense for states to divide their electoral votes? Currently two states do divide their electoral votes, but they are both rather small and otherwise inconsequential. It is mainly the large states which could alter the election at this point.

Currently we have states that do not get touched on in presidential elections, or if so, only token visits because the state's outcome is pretty well determined before the candidate is even announced. It is the swing states that occupy the majority of a candidate's time. This change would certainly alter the current practice.

Currently the states elect a president, compared to districts, or even the people. The scope of the federal government has grown considerably since the time of the founding. Each state can choose individually how their electoral votes are distributed, so therefore a change would not be unconstitutional. But the majority of states do cast their votes in the same way, is there need for a change?

yes

[Bill Dog]

Of course each of the two major political parties will be for what's good for them and against what is or looks like at the time might be bad for them. But this is/should be about a member state of the United States deciding what is best for it. And what is best for it is to actually have some say in these elections. Not too much -- there's always a danger of that considering its size -- but something > 0 is not asking for too much I don't think. The current and a few alternate ideas in brief:

1) Winner-t