Okay, but how does the plan work? The GOP doesn't have one "master plan" to rig the electoral college. Instead, lawmakers are considering a couple of different versions of a plan that would tie electoral votes to congressional districts. Ready to geek out? Okay. The plan would award one electoral vote to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district. That would leave two leftover electoral votes, representing the state's two senators, up for grabs. In Virginia's plan, the two bonus votes would have been given to the candidate who won the most districts (that proposal was killed on Tuesday); in other versions of the proposal, two bonus votes would go to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
The only problem? Congressional districts aren't created equal. In 2010, the GOP went on a massive gerrymandering spree that allowed Republicans to keep their House majority in 2012 even though more Americans voted for Democrats. Tying electoral votes to these gerrymandered districts would give the GOP a huge advantage in states that are expected to go blue on the presidential level. This could discount the votes of those Americans who live in urban areas, particularly minority groups. (Blogger Paul Bibeau found that the Virginia plan would make a Democrat vote worth 3/5 of a Republican one.)
This would give Republican presidential candidates a bunch more electoral votes without forcing them to win over any new voters. Six states—Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—have considered the idea, but it's so controversial that the proposals have lost steam in all but the last two states. "The people supporting this were hoping to do it without anyone noticing, and they thought it was too complicated for people to understand," Ian Millhiser, a senior constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, notes.
