THE DEMOCRAT’S ARMAGEDDON COULD BE IN PENNSYLVANIA

After GOP victories in special elections for the U.S. House in New York and Nevada, liberals and Democrats were on the verge of panic.  Then Dominic Pileggi really freaked them out.

On the very day of these victories (9/13), Mr. Pileggi, the majority leader of the Pennsylvania senate, announced he’ll introduce a bill to allocate Pennsylvania’s electoral votes by congressional district.  The winner statewide would get the two electoral votes for the state’s U.S. senators.  (The GOP gained majorities in both the state senate and state house, plus the governorship in 2010.)

Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania by 10.31 percent points in 2008, garnering all 21 electoral votes.  If the Pileggi proposal had been in force, he’d have gotten only 11.

"In a close national race, an obnoxious scheme like this can alter the entire presidential election, all because Republicans are afraid to fight on a level playing field," wrote liberal Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly.

"It’s just a cynical ploy to arbitrarily favor the Republican party," wrote liberals Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.

But Mr. Drum didn’t think it a "cynical ploy" when Colorado Democrats in 2004 offered a ballot initiative to split that state’s electoral votes.

Nor did any liberal consider it an "obnoxious scheme" when in 1992 Democrats in Florida offered a plan to apportion the Sunshine state’s electoral votes.

Mr. Benen and Mr. Drum support the National Popular Vote campaign, which encourages states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.  Most observers think NPV would provide an advantage to Democrats.  The fact that Democrats control the legislatures of all the 8 states that have voted for NPV is evidence of this.

For liberals, the only "fair" rules changes are those that benefit Democrats.  So for them splitting the electoral votes of a state that usually votes Democrat is a "cynical ploy," but splitting the electoral votes of states which usually vote Republican isn’t. 

It could be Armageddon for Democrats if Mr. Pileggi’s idea spreads, says liberal Nick Baumann:  "After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democrat and went for Obama in 2008."

Any rules change will benefit one party more than another, at least for a while. We need to look beyond short term partisan considerations to see if a proposed change has objective merit.

The Constitution leaves it up to state legislatures to determine how a state’s electoral votes will be apportioned.  Apportioning electoral votes by congressional districts is constitutional.  Maine has done this since 1976, Nebraska since 1996.

NPV proposes an interstate compact (which would go into effect when states with 270 electoral votes agree to it) for the states in the compact to cast their electoral votes for the national popular vote winner.  Since NPV is an effort to circumvent the means the Founders established for electing presidents without benefit of a constitutional amendment, it is constitutionally iffy.

Four times in 54 presidential elections the popular vote winner wasn’t elected. 

In 1824, Andrew Jackson got the most popular and electoral votes in a four way race, but well short of a majority of either.  John Quincy Adams (who finished second) was elected president when Henry Clay (who finished third) threw his support to Adams.

In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected when Democrats agreed to award Louisiana’s electoral votes to him, in exchange for an end to Reconstruction.  This was the only time there was a significant difference between the popular vote winner and the electoral vote winner. 

Samuel Tilden beat Hayes by 3 percentage points in the popular vote.  In 1888, Republican Benjamin Harrison finished 0.8 percentage points behind President Grover Cleveland.  In 2000, George W. Bush finished half a percentage point behind Vice President Al Gore.

The principled argument for NPV is that it would keep that from happening again.  It’s a drastic remedy for a remote prospect.

"The true question here is whether is whether the nation should vote in a state by state presidential election, or a national presidential election," wrote Tara Ross in National Review.

Apportioning electoral votes by congressional district also would make this remote prospect less likely, without doing violence to the intent of the Founders.  And it would make the votes of those who backed the losing candidate within a state count for something.

"Millions and millions of votes are not awarded to the candidate voters choose," noted an editorial in the Courier Times, a newspaper in suburban Philadelphia.

Mr. Pileggi’s idea originated with All Votes Matter, a nonprofit group headed by William Martin Sloane, former chief counsel to the state House of Representatives, and a Democrat.  Pennsylvania’s leading Democrat, former Gov. Ed Rendell, opposes it for partisan reasons, but acknowledges "it’s not a bad idea in concept."

Thomas Jefferson thought so, too.  "All agree an election by districts would be best, if it could be general," he said in a letter to James Monroe.

But a good idea if all states adopted it is problematic if only some do, said Jefferson then and Mr. Rendell now.  Presidential candidates will spend less time and effort in Pennsylvania if it divides up its electoral votes, Mr. Rendell thinks.

I doubt this.  There are a lot of electoral votes to be had in Pennsylvania, and with the Pileggi plan, both parties would have a shot at some of them.

The current system causes a much bigger loss of clout.  Presidential candidates go to California, Texas and New York only to raise money, because outcomes statewide rarely are in doubt.

Imbalance would be greater under NPV, because candidates likely would campaign only in large metropolitan areas, where the most votes are.  Vast swaths of the country could be ignored.

Since a national recount is out of the question, NPV would provide no remedy for fraud in a close election.  Under the present system recounts are possible, because they can be restricted to a single state.

If electoral votes were cast by congressional district, fraud would be less likely, because recounts could be restricted to districts where the outcome was in doubt.

More voters enfranchised, less fraud.  On the merits, Mr. Pileggi has a good idea.  That it discomfits Democrats is, for Republicans, a lagniappe.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.