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Comments
The Congressional-district method of choosing Presidential electors is the easiest way of getting away from the unit rule (the rule that all electoral votes in the state go to one candidate), because so far as I know (based on my experience in Colorado), that's already how the individual electors are chosen.
Each party has meetings for each district of each type in every election year for the respective office. At the Congressional district meetings, the delegates choose the party's candidate for that district, and in years divisible by 4, they also choose a Presidential elector. Then at the state party convention, the delegates choose the other two electors that the state is entitled to by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. It doesn't have to be done this way, but it's the easiest way to let people in every part of the state have equal input.
Of course, if each state simply chose how to allocate the votes directly, rather than choosing people who then cast the votes, the unit rule could be avoided in any number of ways, one of which was put on the ballot in Colorado in 2000 or 2004 (I forget which).
In 2010, Florida voters approved amendments 5 and 6 -- against the Republican legislature/governor's will -- that dictate that congressional and state legislative districts must be drawn compactly, following natural barriers and countie lines, and cannot be drawn to favor a party: The resulting sections of the state constituion are quoted below.
I know this caused much consternation among the Republicans who run our state (despite being a minority of voters state-wide). I am not sure how much effect it has had to date -- but the web site of the group that pushed the ballot measures looks interesting:
http://fairdistrictsnow.org/home/
"SECTION 20. Standards for establishing congressional district boundaries.—In establishing congressional district boundaries:
(a) No apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent; and districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice; and districts shall consist of contiguous territory.(b) Unless compliance with the standards in this subsection conflicts with the standards in subsection 1(a) or with federal law, districts shall be as nearly equal in population as is practicable; districts shall be compact; and districts shall, where feasible, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries."
Until this business with Virginia and Pennsylvania, I would have welcomed a change from the unit rule to the Congressional-district method (don't call it proportional) of choosing Presidential electors. I hadn't realized just how skewed the outcome could be.
I really need to put up the exact wording for my system of objective districting. If someone (nudge, nudge) then publicizes it, Democratic legislators in every state will have something to work from. What I have is specifically written as an amendment to the Colorado constitution, so citations of articles and sections would need to be changed. Moreover, coastal states would have to insert some provision for determining whether a waterway makes two counties non-adjacent.
Okay. It's up here.