Musing About the Electoral College

[billroper]

It suddenly strikes me that there would be a major advantage to mandating that the electors in the Electoral College be chosen by U.S. House district (with the overall winner for the state getting two bonus electors) instead of the current winner-take-all system:

There would be an incentive to draw competitive House districts rather than safe districts, since you would have the chance of delivering more electoral votes to your party's presidential candidate. On the other hand, the same argument would go for the House of Representatives and hasn't seemed to work yet there, so...

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The incentives vary by state. After this election (no matter the outcome), I suppose one might guess that a few non-competitive states will try to maximize attention by candidates by splitting electors by district in a way to put as many of them into play as possible. (It needn't be by Congressional district, either.) But highly competitive states have an incentive to keep their states winner-take-all.