The GOP is already plotting how to marginalize urban voters in the next election [View all]
Choose Your Own Voters
The GOP is already plotting how to marginalize urban voters in the next election.
By David Weigel
Posted Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012, at 11:52 PM ET
In the busy mind of Virginia state Sen. Charles Carrico, voters can be divided into two species. The first: people in my district, which covers a swath of the states rural southwest. These voters are real people. The second species: voters in metropolitan districts. In 2012 and 2008, rural voters watched Democrats turn out that metro vote, which elected Barack Obama. That experience apparently taught Carrico and the people he represents that their votes dont mean anything.
Carricos solution: Make the rural vote matter more and make the metro vote count less. His bill, SB273, would assign 11 of Virginias electoral votes to its 11 congressional districts. The states two remaining votes would go to whoever received the highest number of votes in a majority of congressional districts.
Four of those 11 districts contain huge clusters of Democrats, and voted for Obama. The next seven districts, largely rural, voted for Mitt Romney. Had the Carrico proposal gone into effect this year, Romney would have lost Virginias popular vote by 4 points and carried nine of its 13 electors. The metro denizens vote would have still meant something, sure. It would have meant less than the vote of the angry coal miner in Appalachia.
When I heard about the Carrico proposal and called around, Democrats shrugged. Virginia Republicans control both houses of the Legislature, but they control the Senate only narrowly. Virginia voted Republican for 44 years until Barack Obama came along. Why would ...
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