Electing Out of the Electoral College Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Others have commented on the Electoral College proposal before the Maryland General Assembly, now almost signed into law, that would award Maryland's 10 Electoral College members to the winner of the U.S. popular vote. The law would take effect once states with a total number of Electors exceeding one half of the College total (270 currently) passed a substantially similar bill.

Certain concerns come to mind.

1) If you hated Florida and Katherine Harris and the chads, you will hate a recount of twenty states' worth of Katherine Harrises and chads in a squeaker of a race.

2) The law limits its definition of "national vote" to the votes of states that have joined the compact to appoint Electors in this manner. In other words, hold-out states don't get "two bites" - once for their own Electors and once as part of the national vote, only one or the other. This makes sense but no news report I read actually spelled this out.

3) The proposed statute allows for withdrawal if done with 6 months notice. THIS could get really interesting. If the "Agreement" is near 270, a small state legislature could screw up the election plans of half the country by pulling out.

4) It is likely that some states will never go for this. I could see smaller states holding out, hard-core.

5) The biggest winners will be the light-blue and pink states. Why? Hard-core blue states and red states will not be much affected by this. States that are already largely swing states will be affected, probably reduced in influence, but not too much. The big changes will be in states that have fairly decisive majorities for one party or another, but with some measure of soft votes, i.e. pink states like Virginia and baby blue states like Maryland.

Republicans will have a reason to come to Maryland. Why? Because even if the state is blue on net, turn-out matters and there are a lot of demoralized Republican organizers who would have a new reason to get and stay organized. Ditto for Texas: a red state but with a lot of blue voters in Austin who now have a REAL reason to show up. Republicans would be less likely to linger in San Francisco's sapphire blue neighborhoods because those would NOT swing; Democrats would not spend much time through the rural South for the same reason.

The dynamics for purple districts and states down-ticket would be different. Gerrymandering fights might get nastier in 2010 because more districts in Maryland would get bathed in Republican GOTV money from the Presidential candidates, so Dutch Ruppersburger and even other Democrats could find their turf oddly vulnerable to coattails. Presidential candidates ignore Maryland usually; I could see massive visits here by Dems and Republicans alike, the Dems for straight GOTV and the Republicans barrelling through Anne Arundel and eastern Baltimore County and the Shore not only to GOTV, but to swing conservative Dems, Catholic voters and many others.

I don't know whether I favor this change or not but it would shake up the map in unexpected ways. This is not just a change to the Presidential electoral math, but a major change in where the national battlegrounds lie.