When we talked yesterday about Virginia Republicans' scheme to rig the distribution of electoral votes in the GOP's favor, I noted the 2012 breakdown under the right's preferred model: President Obama would have defeated Mitt Romney by 150,000 votes, but when it came time to distribute electoral votes, Romney would have won nine votes to Obama's four.
It led Maddow Blog reader (and my friend) Gerry Canavan to do the math and note an interesting fraction.
It's true: Obama won about 51% of the popular vote, but would have won a little over 30% of the electoral-college vote under the new Republican model. That means, as Gerry noted yesterday morning, Democratic voters would be counted under the GOP plan as about three-fifths of a vote when it comes to the electoral college.
Where have I heard that fraction before?
Yes, Virginia Republicans began the week by spending Martin Luther King Day redrawing state Senate district lines in their favor, taking advantage of the fact that one of their colleagues -- an African-American civil rights activist -- was away from the chamber for the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president. They then adjourned in memory of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.
The same week, Republicans moved to a scheme to rig the presidential election -- because GOP policymakers think there are too many voters in "densely populated" urban areas -- and count Democratic votes as 3/5 of a vote relative to their actual population.
It's little wonder, then, that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) announced his opposition to the scheme today. He's already Gov. Ultrasound; becoming Gov. Three-Fifths would be equally hard to live down.
Leave a Comment:
What goes around comes around...and this one is coming around to bite all those unreconstructed Republicans right in their posteriors, isn't it. This lady is smiling behind her fan.
I have to note that between this scheme and the Clinton and Kerry hearings, we're hearing from a lot of Republicans who are neither obnoxious nor insane, who don't have the high profiles of a Paul or a Bachmann. They should get together and form a political party.
No they like their jobs...as it is they are hoping anything they might have said that sounds reasonable isn't going to be used in an attack add during their Primaries.
Just when was it announced that the Virginia legislators would be meeting on Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day? Were any other Legislatures in session on this national holiday? Unbelievable!
Well, Virginia legislators had to work on that day because they just HAD to take Stonewall Jackson's/Robert E. Lee's birthday off! You ever needed a more obvious indication of what Virginia Republicans are all about? 3/5ths don't mean what you think it means here!
I had dibs on that fraction: http://hamptonroads.com/2013/01/proposed-electoral-revamp-yields-infamous-fraction
Dibs!
No, wait. He did first. Damnit. Damnit all to hell! I feel like that other guy who was working on the whole evolution thing. The other guy. I'm gonna go talk to some beer about this.
Poor Wallace...
Republicans justy got handed a devastating election defeat and public drubbing by the voters of this great nation. so what do they do? Change course and listen to what folks say they want from their leaders? Of course not. The GOP has doubled down on the extreme and insane that got them into their electoral mess in the first place. They blast Mitt Romney for "47 percent" and other missteps, and claim to have learned not to talk about "rape" and other crazy things. But minutes later, they turn around and are relitigating issues that most Americans thought were decided long ago. Like secession. Or nullification. Or the right to, you know, cast a ballot freely in America. Republicans are regressing to the party of dangerous amateurs with no interest in the future of this nation. - progressive
Yeah, his official moniker is Gov. Ultrasound, and he is working on embracing Gov. 3/5's!
But, no matter the official title, he will always be fondly referred to, in informal circles, as Transvaginal Bob! -Kevo
Bob McDonnell Comes Out Against GOP Electoral College-Rigging Plan
"And should it clear the legislature, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday he opposes it. Spokesman J. Tucker Martin said McDonnell, a Republican, "believes Virginia's system works just fine."
Similar legislation is pending in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who was re-elected to a second two-year term Friday, endorsed the concept last week. Other GOP leaders have expressed support for the idea as a way to rebound after last fall's defeats.
Nebraska and Maine now award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and the other two to the statewide winner. If other states were to follow this model, it could dramatically change the way Americans elect their president. In the current political climate, it also could put Democrats at a disadvantage in states Obama won but where Republican legislatures drew congressional district lines to maximize GOP performance.
In the November election, Obama won the popular vote with 65.9 million votes, or 51.1 percent, to Republican Mitt Romney's 60.9 million, or 47.2 percent. Obama won the Electoral College by 332-206."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/bob-mcdonnell-electoral-college_n_2553197.html
I'm still enjoying watching the sane defunct Republicans being pushed out of the party and the INSANE losers gaining control of the party spouting about the need to change their rhetoric, but not their principles. Soooo, they will no longer SAY they don't like gays, hispanics, blacks, or women, but continue those ideals. How do you make that sound, when you use your index finger to wave up and down over your lips while you hum?
This Virginia story is just more proof that the Republicans have gone Gerry-Meandering crazy! We not only need election reform in the context of campaign reform, but we also need all of our congressional districts reviewed by an inderpendent non-partisan commission. That is IF we can find eight to ten professionals that could meet that characterization.
Plato is resting easy. This is what he meant when he informed Glaucon that it is impossible to form a perfect government.
473b-474b.
Electoral College Rules Unfair, Says Will Weatherford, Florida Republican House Speaker
Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) spoke out against the GOP's latest attempt at strategizing for 2016, saying that his state would not go along with the electoral vote rigging.
Republicans in states that have a tendency to vote Democrat on the national level, but Republican on the state level, are proposing a major change to Electoral College votes that would be based on congressional districts. They argue that if the system worked their way, Mitt Romney would be president.
Five states are currently discussing the redistribution of electoral votes, but Weatherford told the Miami Herald that his swing state is not interested.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/electoral-college-rules_n_2551728.html
The first time I saw Bill Carrico, he was on stage at a local high school. When he first took the microphone, he introduced himself and said, " folks I'm just like you...I shop at Walmart. The repubs were captivated by him. He was local, graduate from the very high school. They thought he would stay in this area if he won State Congressman, well he won and established his office in Galax Virginia.
Now Bill Carrico is our State Senator representing Virginia 9th District. He is leading the charge to redistribute electoral votes from urban areas in Virginia. Because urbanites tend to vote democrat. This will end the winner-take-all and one person one vote.
Urban communities, you know, town and city dwellers...low income renters, the Housing Authority apartments ect.. the people that the republicans consider insufficient until they want their vote.
The republicans could not buy the presidency. Their voter fraud attempts, got "them" caught. jerrymandering didn't work out the way they had planned. Now they are trying to rig the electoral vote. What will they think of next? I have a petition on moveon..."Stop Redistributing Virginia voters"...please find and sign...thanks
I am very much a supporter of many liberal points of view and I despise the little mind and (repetitive) word games republicans play, and I am an African American. But, 3/5 on Martin Luther King is a big huge stretch to make here.
It's clear republicans are trying to stack the deck in their favor by gerrymandering...as they have done many many times over. And they do it openly. Rachel and the person she quoted should have made their point based on the facts alone. It does not do democracy good to play off people's emotions and race-bait.
That is straight from the GOPs and conservatives playbook. I would hope liberals would rise above petty tricks like that. Make an intelligent, coherent argument without the mind games. Argue on the facts and let people decide.
I don't argue on the point Rachel is making...just the way the point is made. Some times I feel MSNBC is trying to beat FoxNews at its own game. What this country is missing is real, hard-nosed journalism with investigative reporting that digs beneath the surface. Not the same games fox play.
My .02
Stonewall Jackson...it figures. Then they adjourned early and went to their KKK meeting.
KKK (Koup Koch Klan)
3/5?
3/5?
there's so much to say...but sometimes.....it's so simple and obvious, it's ridiculous.
I think they will back down on redistricting for a couple of reasons..One they got caught and it got media attention, the elections over and so it the ad money.. Second as some backed this the others will denounce it and its an attempt to make the Neocon look legitimate honest caring fair. LOL! Don't fool me for a second! They had a dirty trick and now its lemons so they are making lemonade. Funny making lemonade out of Kool-aid!
So 3/5 human is what most Republicans consider Hispanics to be in this country unless they are house landscapers like Mitt Romney employed? Why else is the GOP in some red states requiring police to stop anyone who looks like a Mexican guest worker and ask for "their papers?" Sounds like the old runaway slave gig and House apportionment to me.
Care to talk about Virginia's presidential voting results prior to 2008? I thought not. It's the Democrats' way to somehow making you think that they have always, or even somewhat regularly, contolled Virginia in the electoral college. Look at history....this is an outright sham!!
Isn't it funny that Republicans won 8.....yes "8" presidential elections in a row....spanning 32 years...back into the 1970's....prior to 2008? Frankly, that's as far as Google would easily let me look back! Dems have won exactly 2 times. Obama, and again, Obama. Your point?
32 years in a row? What about Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. How do you figure that there were 8 Republican presidents in a row? If you have to Google this, you are too young and/or stupid to know what you are talking about. And, yes, Google does go back further than 32 years.
So how do you characterize Nixon who was forced to resign? A president or non-president for that term? Bet you aren't aware of that either because it happened before Google started keeping track of the world?
Heard today on the Reverend Al's show that a marketing firm headed up by former Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of the Diebold voting machine controversy in the 2004 election came up with the newest GOP electoral college voter suppression idea.
Who will ever forget the 2003 letter Diebolt's president and top Ranger fundraiser for the Bush campaign wrote promising that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
It seems appropriate somehow that the newest Republican cheating scheme comes from the most notorious charter member of the GOP Voting Fraud Hall of Shame. But then they are the Stupid Party as Bobby Jindal reminded Republicans again today.
Now the GOP also looks like the most corrupt one as well. Michael Moore just may have found a subject for his next documentary? You can't make up stuff like this. The Republican Party is a feakin' criminal organization.
Yes, Rachel, I agree: Michael Steel IS a good sport, and - dare I say — a fairly rational Erpublican . . . but I would have been more interested in hearing about some Dem's that have a chance of replacing Chambliss . . . maybe the Mayor of Atlanta?
more Progressives, please!
Bring an end to these shenanigans once and for all. Sign the petition to end the electoral college and amend the constitution to elect the president by a popular vote of all the people, not the house of representative's district maps.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-popular-election-president-eliminate-electoral-college/m8kGdNdY
I couldn't agree more. It's high time the US became a real Democracy!!
I am heartened that the increased publicity by TRMS (and others) around the potential rigging of the electoral vote process has had a good effect... by stopping or slowing these proposed changes in some states.
"... three fifths of all other Persons."
What's the problem - it's right there in the Constitution. I wasn't aware that being a Democrat qualified as an "other Person" - perhaps I missed that Supreme Court ruling.
I'm disappointed not to see a critique of the arithmetic in the post. Thirty percent does not equal 3/5! And, dividing 30% of the electoral college votes by 50% of the popular vote is equating apples with oranges. If we're going to be so hard on the Republicans' budget math, we ought to make sure we've got our own numbers straight.
They did not make their reasoning clear - looks like they did this.
Say there are 20 electoral votes for a state and the popular vote numbers are equal. Each would get 10 votes. By Republican tinkering, the Democrats would get 10* 3/5ths or 6 votes. 6 would be 30% of the available electoral votes for that state. You could then expand that to the entire country. So a 50/50 split gives the Republicans a 20% lead.
Mess with the numbers some more and assuming votes are evenly apportioned based on the number of voters, the Republicans could win a majority of the electoral votes (at least in this one state) with only 21% to 25% of the popular vote. (Depends on how you do your rounding)
That's the best that I can figure out.
What puzzles me is why the Republicans are against gun control - the only way they could pull this off is if they disarm the population first.