I really tried not to like Rep. Dan LeMahieu's plan to allocate Wisconsin's Electoral College votes by congressional district, following a scheme known as the Congressional District Method.
Sure, the assemblyman from Cascade has proposed what looks like a blatant power-grab: since Democrats usually win Wisconsin's popular vote, all of our Electoral College votes go to Democrats, even though they don't win by very much. Under the new plan, the winner of the popular vote would only get two electoral votes; the rest would go to whoever won the popular vote in each congressional district (meaning the Republican could get partial credit for their strongholds in the state). Sure, the plan is just another piece of a Republican plan to change Electoral College rules to their benefit (left-leaning Pennsylvania is currently debating the same plan, while blood-red Nebraska is considering going the other way, to give Republicans all of their electoral votes). Sure, this plan may disrupt the balance in the always-controversial Electoral College.
But even knowing all of these things, I can't make myself dislike this plan. In fact, I think I see the logic of it: adopting the congressional district method in Wisconsin would make our presidential elections more fair.
It's pretty plain that the Electoral College has problems. Proportionally, voters in smaller states are better off than those in larger ones because their votes count for more (since there is a limit to how few electors a state can have, and the larger states don't have enough electors to make up for this head start). However, most of the time, both big and small states are ignored, with only a few states getting attention. This is because the outcome in most states is a foregone conclusion, giving the candidates no reason to visit. Only a few states have competitive presidential elections, so these states, Wisconsin among them, effectively decide who wins. This means that presidential candidates will skip over many states to visit a few. Since these states are usually the same every time, their interests are over-represented (ever wonder why Iowan ethanol subsidies are so sacred? This is part of the reason).
We could fix this by getting rid of the Electoral College, or effectively getting rid of it by convincing enough states to give their votes to the winner of the national popular vote-after all, the framers of the U.S. constitution didn't tell us not to. Personally, I'd like to see the Electoral College disappear, but I think LeMahieu has a secret plan to make it better while we wait.
Since Wisconsin is a swing state, it gets more than its fair share of attention in presidential elections. However, if we adopted the congressional district method, we wouldn't be making the election fairer for everyone. Wisconsin's Electoral College votes are valuable because they all come together, even if the winner only wins by a little bit. But what would happen if they didn't? Well, Madison and Milwaukee, at the very least, would push their districts to the left, predictably electing Democrats. But since Wisconsin is a swing state, if there are a lot of predictably Democratic voters, there have to be a lot of predictably Republican voters as well, to balance them out.
In the end, even though statewide races are close, most districts are already in the bag for one of the candidates. Now, instead of a whole state to fight for, candidates get to come to Wisconsin for the crumbs that are left over; Wisconsin would no longer get much national attention during the election.
LeMahieu said that he wanted to "protect the vote in congressional districts that typically vote contrary to the statewide vote," such as those he represents. However, it seems he's nice enough to protect the votes of people outside his district, too-all over the country, in fact! Forget the appearance of partisanship; this bill might be the most selfless thing ever written in the Wisconsin Assembly.
I guess the only question is this: what if LeMahieu does not realize the unintended consequences of the legislation?
Zach Thomae is a freshman majoring in computer science. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinalcom.
