| When you don't feel you can compete fairly, you change the rules so that you win unfairly. I give you today's Republican Party. Lansing — Republicans handed Bobby Schostak another two-year term as state chairman Saturday and overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to change Michigan presidential electoral vote rules in a way opponents charge is intended to distort election results in favor of GOP candidates. By a 1,370-132 margin at the party convention in Lansing, GOP members approved a resolution backing a proposal from Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, to divvy-up 14 of the state's 16 electoral votes according to which candidate got the most votes in each congressional district. The other two would go to the state-wide vote total winner. That switch from a winner-take-all formula that has been in effect 175 years could water down the dominance Democrats have had in Michigan in presidential elections for the last 24 years.
This is a sign of a structural weakness in the Michigan Republican Party. Keep in mind that if Michigan is alone in doing this, and it appears that we mostly are, that it'll be Michigan that will be marginalized instead of getting attention every four years. And, since the number of Electoral College votes is pretty small, and since my guess is any attempt to ungerrymander legislative districts will be met with by a very accepting public (who mostly hate state government), then the advantage will be very short lived. They'll do all this work to pick up three or four electoral college votes. Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan in the past has been very cool to it. It would be on his agenda right before the next Census, he says. What's that aphorism about cows? Bill Ballenger, publisher of the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter, speculated Snyder is again seeing bills he vetoed or discouraged last year because he has signaled he is flexible. "I think there has been this feeling that just because he says 'no' doesn't mean he's unalterably opposed," he said. "He's persuadable, in other words."
In other words, they think he's got no more belly for a fight than did Jennifer Granholm, that when it comes time to put together a legislative package for road funding that he'll be willing to deal on really noxious shit to get it through. |
