Congressional District Plan I
This Plan is already in effect in Maine and Nebraska, both of whom have a relatively small amount of votes with Maine having 4 and Nebraska having 5. In the 2012 election both states gave all of their electoral college votes to one candidate but in 2008 that was not the case. In 2008 McCain won the state's popular vote by over 100,00 votes and got four out of the five electoral college votes, however, Obama also received one vote because of his victory in Nebraska's 2nd district of Omaha.
The breakdown of Nebraska's counties can be seen in the picture to the left.
The breakdown of Nebraska's counties can be seen in the picture to the left.
Congressional District Plan II
This plan in particular has come into the limelight recently. It has better become known as "The Virginia Plan" because that's where it gained it's notoriety when it was moved through it's subcommittee this January with a 3-3 vote. The plan quickly became a hot topic on the national scale. Republicans claimed that it gave rural areas a fairer chance at getting their voices heard. While many Democrats, including Ed Schultz in the video to the left, are sounding off that this is just another Republican scheme to jerry rig the election.
Whatever their reasoning behind proposing the change was, the numbers won't lie. The picture below shows the impact that changing how electoral college votes were allocated through the Virginia Plan would have effected the 2012 presidential election. |
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My Take
I very much dislike the congressional district plans. In many ways I feel like that allocating delegates by district is tipping the scale and putting more weight into the votes of a rural minority. I also feel like relying so heavily on congressional districts opens up the door for gerrymandering and other political tricks. Plan I, which Maine and Nebraska already have, I believe is slightly more fair because it does take into account the popular vote. While the Virginia plan completely ignores what the majority want and instead look at how many counties each candidate won, completely disregarding the differences in population each county has. For these reasons I feel that moving towards a congressional district plan would be a mistake especially for the urbanites and other city dwellers.