Michigan Republicans have a plan that would have had Mitt Romney winning and losing Michigan at the same time.
With no elections between them and the 2016 presidential election, Michigan Republicans are once again thinking about
rigging the presidential vote by changing how the state divvies up its electoral college votes. Dave Weigel reports that:
In 2011, that state's Republicans joined Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin in considering legislation to split up the state's electoral votes by congressional districts. While Democratic gubernatorial wins in Pennsylvania and Virginia have ended the push in those states, last week saw an electoral vote-splitting bill come back to the Michigan legislature. House Bill 4310 would assign one presidential elector to the winner of each district and two to the winner of the state. Had this system been in place in 2012, Mitt Romney would have lost Michigan by nearly 450,000 of 4.7 million votes, but walked away with nine of the state's 16 electoral votes.
That disparity is because Republicans used 2010 redistricting to concentrate Democratic votes tightly in a few districts and create more Republican districts. Extending that to the presidential election would help revive Republican hopes by discounting Democratic votes.
Will Michigan Republicans decide that gerrymandering has made them safe enough to just go for it? Or will the threat of backlash make them back off, as they did in 2011?