Forty-eight states allocate their Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis (the exceptions are Maine and Nebraska). That’s quite likely to change, especially in my home state of Pennsylvania. Each state’s share of the Electoral College is based on their two senators and however many members of the House of Representatives they happen to have. In Maine and Nebraska, the winner of the popular vote automatically wins the two Senate delegates. The rest of the delegates are allocated according to the winner of each congressional district. In 2008, Obama lost Nebraska but won in one of its congressional districts. As a result, he was awarded one delegate from Nebraska.
There was nothing illegal or unconstitutional about that, and the same will hold true if Pennsylvania (or Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Florida) changes their delegate-assignment system.
Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state’s two senators) for carrying the state. This would have an effect equivalent to flipping a small winner-take-all state—say, Nevada, which has six electoral votes—from blue to red. And Republicans wouldn’t even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.
What we might see is a real effort by the Republican Party to take advantage of their control of state governments to change the rules in a way that the Democrats will be unable to match. Retaliation is not possible because the Dems do not have total control of the government in any red states other than West Virginia and Arkansas. How many congressional districts is Obama likely to win in those two states?
Left unsaid in the above excerpt, is that making such a move would reduce Pennsylvania’s importance down to roughly the level of New Hampshire. The award for winning the state would only be two Electoral Votes, and the fight beyond that would be over only two or three swing districts. Maybe Obama could carry eight congressional district instead of six, and wind up splitting the delegates 10-10. Either way, the Republican would have pocketed ten to twelve delegates they would have otherwise lost. Repeat that in several other sizable states and suddenly it becomes quite likely that a Republican candidate could win the presidency while getting absolutely thumped in the popular vote.
It’s a recipe for civil war, but I guess that’s where we’re headed anyway, right?