Electoral vote plan divides Michigan GOP

Lansing ? Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville said Tuesday he doesn't necessarily agree with a proposal to change the rule under which Michigan awards its 16 electoral votes to the presidential candidate winning the state's popular vote.

Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, has said he planned to bring back a 2012 bill that would switch to a system by which the state divvies up 14 of its electoral votes according to which candidate gets the most votes in each congressional district. The last two votes would go to the winner of the statewide vote.

"I don't know that it's broken, so I don't know that I want to fix it," said Richardville, R-Monroe.

There are signs that talk of such a strategy is moderating among Republican politicians.

After initially seeming to say he was open to the plan, Gov. Rick Snyder disparaged it this week in a Bloomberg TV interview.

"I'm very skeptical of the idea and the time frame that would be done," Snyder said. "We don't want to change the playing field so it's an unfair advantage to someone. And in a lot of ways, we want to make sure we're reflecting the vote of the people, and this could challenge that."

He said the appropriate time to make a change would be before ? not just after ? a U.S. Census and the resulting congressional redistricting.

And he added it should be a bipartisan effort.

"I don't think this is the time to really look at it," Snyder said.

Democrats see the move as an unfair effort by the GOP to gain advantage after controlling redistricting in a state that the Democratic candidate for president has won since 1988.

The effort to change Electoral College rules had an initial surge of interest in states ? mostly in the Midwest ? where Obama captured all of the electoral votes to seal his 2012 victory but Republicans have held legislative majorities and other top elective offices for the past two years.

One analysis says if Lund's proposal had been in effect last year, Mitt Romney would have captured nine of Michigan's electoral votes despite losing statewide to President Barack Obama by nearly 450,000 votes.

The idea has been discussed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, although there were reports Tuesday that Ohio's GOP is dropping the idea.

Virginia has legislation calling for the change, but Gov. Bob McDonnell has said publicly he thinks it's a bad idea.

Richardville argued Michigan's winner-take-all approach to awarding electoral votes gives the state more influence in choosing a president.

He said, however, he would take a look at any proposal coming over from the state House.

All but two states, Maine and Nebraska, are winner-take-all. Those two follow rules like the ones Lund proposes.

Lund has yet to introduce his proposal this year, but plans to do so. A bill he sponsored last year failed to gain support and died at the end of the legislative session.

Lund said now is the perfect time to debate the change because the next election is far off.

"We've got 45 weeks until it matters," he said. "I'm still going to do it but I'm not in a hurry; it's not a priority right now."

gheinlein@detroitnews.com

(517) 371-3660

Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130130/POLITICS02/301300350/1022/rss10

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