News-Record.com

Well, maybe it's because North Carolina always votes Republican in presidential elections, giving the GOP candidate a clean sweep of the state's 15 electoral votes.

This bill would change that.

A quick refresher: Each state gets the same number of electoral votes as it has members of Congress. That's two senators, plus its representatives. North Carolina has 13 reps, so we have 15 votes in the Electoral College. That's where the presidential winner is decided: 270 EV's get you elected.

Forty-eight states award EV's like NC does - winner take all. Maine and Nebraska divvy them up by congressional district. This is the proposal introduced in our Legislature.

It gives the statewide winner the two electoral votes that correspond with the two senate seats. Then it allocates an electoral vote to each congressional district. The presidential candidate with the largest vote total in each district wins that EV.

In North Carolina, this likely would produce a GOP advantage of 9-6 under the current congressional district structure. That would be a big improvement for Democrats, considering they're getting whacked 15-0 now. That's why only Democrats are supporting this change. Of course, that's enough to win legislative approval.

I oppose this, but not because it hurts Republicans. I offer two reasons.

First, it increases the incentive for the party that controls the Legislature (currently Democrats) to gerrymander congressional districts in its favor. Democrats have proven to be very capable of doing this sort of thing, as illustrated by the fact that they can lose the overall statewide popular vote for state legislative seats but still emerge with strong majorities in both the N.C. House and Senate. So with electoral votes at stake, they'll have more reason to draw congressional districts in ways that minimize the impact of Republican voters and maximize the impact of Democratic voters.

More importantly, however, dividing our electoral votes will water down North Carolina's impact in the Electoral College. Here's how:

Right now we have a 15-vote impact. That's our input, whether it's for the Democrat or the Republican. Now, suppose we divide our EVs and come up with a 9-6 tally. In effect, that reduces our Electoral College impact to 3 votes, the advantage of one candidate over the other. We fall from being a major Electoral College player with 15 votes to a minor character with only 3 votes.

This counters the argument of proponents who say that if all our EVs are individually in play, candidates will spend more time campaigning here. I think just the opposite is true. For all practical purposes, our real Electoral College impact will be no more than 3 votes, and maybe even less, so there's less reason for a candidate to spend much time campaigning here. We would become less relevant.

That assumes that other states remain winner-take-all. Those that do will remain impact states and eclipse North Carolina in Electoral College importance. This would be a very bad move for North Carolina unless all states adopted the new method. Not likely.

Sure, my argument is subject to attack along two lines. The first is that proportional division of EVs is more fair because it reflects the will of the people. Well, fine for North Carolina. But that's not how it is in most states. The will of North Carolina voters would be buried under the rest of the country's electoral votes. Second, Democrats no doubt would prefer that North Carolina have a reduced role in the Electoral College than a big impact for the Republican candidate. In other words, better to have no vote than a Republican vote. But that attitude would change as soon as the Democrats came up with a candidate who could appeal to North Carolina's moderate voters - like Jim Hunt and Mike Easley have done in gubernatorial elections.

Until then (and I'm not holding my breath), I prefer to stick with our present means of apportioning electoral votes - winner take all and losers weep.