Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 24, 1992 TAG: 9202240220
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MORE CAMPAIGN COMPETITION
AS IN MOST states, the presidential candidate who carries Virginia gets all the state's 13 electoral votes. But under a bill approved recently by the House of Delegates, only two electoral votes would go to the statewide winner. The others would be allocated according to how many of Virginia's 11 congressional districts each candidate carries.House Democrats may have seen it as a chance to squeeze an electoral vote or two from a state that habitually votes Republican in national elections. A better reason for favoring the change is that it might make presidential elections fairer and, on balance, increase voter interest in them.
It could:
Make Virginia's Electoral College votes more closely reflect the state's popular vote.
The Republicans have carried Virginia in every presidential election since 1964. But Democratic candidates have garnered as much as 49.9 percent, in 1976. That didn't give Jimmy Carter a single Virginia electoral vote, even though he carried four of the state's then-10 congressional districts.
Bring presidential politics closer to individual citizens, by making your vote count at the congressional-district as well as state level.
When it's a landslide, as in 1972 or 1984, this would make no difference. But an election need not be as close as 1976 to generate more excitement. Though losing statewide by 13 percentage points, for example, Carter in 1980 carried one Virginia congressional district and came close in another. Even Michael Dukakis in 1988, while losing by 20 points statewide, managed to make a modest race of it in a couple of districts.
Animate presidential campaigning in Virginia.
The campaigns usually ignore Virginia because the statewide result usually is a foregone conclusion weeks before Election Day. If there were uncertainty about at least some of the state's electoral votes, this might change.
Not all Virginia districts would be competitive. The net effect of last year's reconfiguration of the 3rd into a black-majority Tidewater-Richmond district seems to be replacement of a Republican bastion with a Democratic one, and the transformation of two formerly competitive districts into reliably Republican territory. Three or four other districts, perhaps including the Roanoke-based 6th, seem apt to stay Republican in presidential elections (except in a Democratic landslide, should one ever occur).
That leaves four or five districts with competitive potential even when the statewide result appears foreordained. Some competitive spirit would be better than none.
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POLITICS GENERAL ASSEMBLY