12/12/12: The root of the divisiveness in our politics

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THE ELECTION was held more than a month ago, but the votes are still being counted. As of Monday, results have been certified in 44 states, including Virginia. On Dec. 17, electors representing each state’s voters will meet to cast their ballots. Because President Barack Obama won Virginia 51 percent to 47 percent over Mitt Romney, all of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes will be cast for Obama.

A bill submitted by state Sen. Bill Carrico, a Republican from Grayson County, would change that. Rather than being a winner-take-all state, Virginia would allocate electoral votes by congressional districts under Carrico’s bill. Further, the candidate who received the highest number of votes in a majority of the districts would then be awarded two additional electoral votes.

Each state has electoral votes based on the number of congressional districts — Virginia has eleven — plus two, one for each U.S. senator. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, have adopted an allocation of electoral votes by district.

Had Carrico’s bill been in effect for this election, Romney, who won seven of the 11 districts, would have been awarded nine electoral votes and Obama four.

Is that representative of the way that Virginia voted? Absolutely not.

One of the arguments against the Electoral College nationally has been the case of a candidate winning the Electoral College vote but losing the popular vote, a possibility discussed this year.

Four presidents have taken office without winning the popular vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888) and George W. Bush (2000). Had Carrico’s bill been in effect in 2000, three of Virginia’s electoral votes would have been allocated to Democrat Al Gore, who lost Virginia by eight percentage points.

Of course, the congressional district lines were different in 2000 than they are now. Originally drawn in 1991, five of the districts were modified in 1998 as the result of a court challenge. The lines under which November’s elections were held were drawn last year. In 2000, Virginia elected six Republicans, four Democrats and one independent to the U. S. House of Representatives; last month, it was eight Republicans and three Democrats.

The partisans figured it out a long time ago: Redistricting is the way to gain and maintain power. On the surface, each district has an equal number of voters, as required by law.

But looking past that reveals that districts are designed to be either Republican or Democratic, making it virtually impossible for a candidate of the opposite party to win. Of the 11 districts in Virginia, only the Second District can reasonably be considered a swing district, with both Republican Scott Rigell and Obama winning there.

Partisan redistricting allows the elected to choose his voters, instead of the other way around. And it is the root of the divisiveness in our politics.

Nationally, House Democratic candidates received 51 percent of the vote, but were elected to only 46 percent of the seats. Only one other time in the last 40 years — in 1996 — did the party who won the majority of the votes end up in the minority.

In Virginia, where the major party congressional candidates received more than 111,000 votes fewer than those cast for the major party candidates for president, a 51 percent to 49 percent Republican advantage in votes cast resulted in a 73 percent Republican congressional delegation.

When the shoe was on the other foot in 2000, Republicans in the Virginia legislature thought allocation of the state’s electoral votes by congressional district was a bad idea. It still is, and this bill should be defeated.