Politics, by its very nature, is a dirty, dirty business and
I am always amazed to what lengths politicians will go to get elected or get
their party elected.
The new push here in Michigan, is to get our “electoral”
voting rules changed. As we all know, each state has a number of electoral votes;
16 for Michigan. These electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote in Michigan;
winner takes all.
I think we can all agree that this is inherently
undemocratic since all the electoral votes go to the winner even though he or
she may have won the popular vote by just one single vote.
Many contend that the electoral votes should be apportioned
according to the popular vote as in percentage of the popular vote. So if you
gained 50% of the popular vote you should get 50% of the electoral votes which
in Michigan would equal 8 electoral votes.
I think we all would be in favor of such a policy but the
Republicans are suggesting a different approach.
They have introduced legislation to award electoral votes by
“congressional districts”.
Here is the problem with that plan: congressional districts
are re-drawn every 10 years based on population which is as it should be BUT
the party in power at that time, gets to re-draw the districts as they see fit
and that party will always re-draw those districts in their favor.
The word “gerrymandering” comes into play here. It means
that the party in power will re-draw voting districts to give them an edge in
elections no matter how ridiculous the shape of the districts become.
If this plan was in place in 2012, Romney would have picked
up 9 electoral votes and Obama 7 even though Obama won the popular vote by 10%.
Fortunately our governor who is a Republican but a smart
Republican can see the inherent “unfairness” in this plan and will not allow
such legislation to pass.
Unfortunately, this plan exposes the lengths politicians
will go to get an edge even if it means negating the power of each individual
vote…
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