RNC chairman backs changes to electoral vote apportionment

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus supports Republican governors pushing to change the rules of how they apportion electoral votes in Democratic-leaning states, a gambit that would provide a huge boost for the GOP in the electoral college.

"I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," Priebus said last weekend of a plan to change how electoral votes are granted from a winner-take-all system for statewide votes to one where each congressional district gets a vote.

He argued that system "gives more local control" to the states — but what it would do in effect is give Republicans a huge boost in the electoral college and make it much easier for GOP presidential candidates to win.

Republicans have total statehouse control in a number of states President Obama won in 2012, and got to draw the redistricting lines in those states, giving them the big edge in winning their House seats. If the rules were changed in states like Priebus's home of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney would have won half of the state's electoral votes in the presidential election. In Pennsylvania, where the proposal has also been discussed, Romney would have won nearly two-thirds of the electoral votes rather than none of them.

Other states where Republicans could implement the plan and give themselves a huge boost include Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Virginia. But it's unclear if any will pass such a plan: when Republicans made some initial attempts to do so in Pennsylvania before the last election, popular sentiment was strongly against it and they eventually gave up.

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