Will Republicans start allocating Georgia electoral votes by Congressional district?

[Mr.Phips]

Say in 2024 in a relatively close election, Georgia continues to move Dem and votes for the Dem candidate by around the national popular vote margin.  Based on this, it would appear that the path for Republicans to a statewide victory is disappearing.  Does the Republican legislature and governor pass a law to allocate the state’s electoral votes by Congressional district to guarantee Republicans nine electoral votes regardless of how the statewide vote goes?  

[Skill and Chance]

Probably not because they obviously still hope to win it back at this point and they may not have the governorship anymore when the time comes.  Biden only won Georgia by the skin of his teeth in a >4% PV win.  Give Trump a 1% uniform swing and 4-5 EVs from safe Dem CDs in Atlanta would be the difference between the House electing Trump and Biden winning the EC outright.  It's entirely possible the Atlanta CDs would be decisive in electing a Dem president as late as 2028.

[Skill and Chance]

Well if they do, hopefully other states start doing it. At least that's more proportional than winner-take-all electoral college vote allocation.

Oh wait, gerrymandering is a thing. Ugh.

Splitting them straight proportional to the statewide PV is the way to go, including the 2 "Senator" EVs. 

[MATTROSE94]

I think that Stacy Abrams will defeat Brian Kemp in a rematch in 2022 and will easily be re-elected in 2026 (during President Ron DeSantis' first midterm election), so Georgia will be in Democratic hands by 2024 and likely not implement a different electoral vote allocation system.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I think they'll hold off on this unless and until they lose 2024.

[Skill and Chance]

That having been said, it is very possible Georgia ends up being decisive in 2024 if Harris is the nominee:

 

I assume PA would still vote left of GA for Biden given the home state bounce.

[Beet]

If this happens we pretty much need to redo the civil rights movement all over again...

[pbrower2a]

States are not allowed to cast their electoral votes in ways that grossly distort representation of voters in a split. The non-split of winner-take-al is still acceptable.

The two states that do split their votes by Congressional district have clear divides for their districts.  that separate parts of those two states into very separate locations. In Maine it is a clear north-south divide; in Nebraska it is an urban area (Greater Omaha) and two districts that divide between a largely-farming area and the ranching area that is the thinly-populated central and western part of the state. For may other states, gerrymandering is a potential problem. Congressional districts are mostly transitory entities as populations shift. The First Congressional District of Michigan has expanded from the Upper Peninsula (an area whose population density is characteristic of the non-urban areas of the Mountain West) as it has shed population.

Most Congressional districts change over time. Michigan will lose a Congressional District, and I can imagine my county being transferred from one Congressional district to another. If I drive on a rural freeway in Michigan I see signs for county and township lines, but never for Congressional districts.

For states with seven or more electoral votes I would split the electoral votes, giving the electoral votes assigned to US senatorial representation to the winner of the state and splitting the rest  of the electoral votes proportionately among the leading vote-getters, with the qualification that nobody gets a partial electoral vote.

Here's how it would work with the one state that has twelve electoral votes (Washington). Based on the 2020 vote, the winner of the plurality of votes (Joe Biden) would get the two statewide votes not associated with Congressional districts. That leaves ten other electoral votes to divide.

No third-party nominee won 10% of the vote, so Jo Jorgenson would get no electoral votes, and her votes would be ignored. That leaves 3,954,263 votes between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Trump would end up with just over 40% of the meaningful votes (which rules out Libertarian, Green, and other such nominees and such political luminaries as "Jesus Christ", "Santa Claus", "Darth Vader", "None of the Above", and persons ineligible to be elected such as people Constitutionally ineligible such as George Herbert Walker Bush [deceased], Barack Obama [two-term disqualification] and Madeleine Albright [not a natural-born US citizen]). Trump would get (obviously with ten electoral votes to divide, the math gets easy) four full electoral votes and Biden would get five for their full shares. Biden gets the remaining electoral votes. Thus Biden gets eight electoral votes from Washington state and Trump gets four, and he would be lucky to get those four. 

 

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

That having been said, it is very possible Georgia ends up being decisive in 2024 if Harris is the nominee:

 

I assume PA would still vote left of GA for Biden given the home state bounce.

Bob Casey Jr is on the ballot and so is Tammy Baldwin we are losing WI and PA and Rs can't beat Fetterman

[Schiff for Senate]

No, because GA could still very plausibly vote red, and it would backfire massively. Because despite the insistence of users on Talk Elections, GA is still very much a swing state and not a blue one that could go red. It voted blue in 2020 by 0.24%, and there are enough suburbanite moderate Romney/Biden voters who might return to the GOP if Trump isn't the nominee, and there might easily be enough to flip the state back (albeit narrowly), despite demographic changes. Of course, in the long term GA will become bluer, but for now (and for 2024) it will be blue.

 If passing those kinds of laws is what the GOP wants to do, they should do it in states like MI and PA, where even if they lose the state (which is pretty likely for 2024), they get a good number of electoral votes they'd be otherwise deprived of.

 The task is for them to find a state which is blue enough at a presidential level where they can implement this law, and successfully. In GA, it could very easily be counterintuive.

 Of course, the GOP can pass this law in GA in some years, when GA is bluer - but the problem with that is Democrats might control the legilsature by then, which can be remedied by Georgia Republicans pulling a massive and agressive gerrymander to maintain their majority and implement this law at the right time, when GA is blue - which is currently not the case.

[Pres Mike]

No

Every state official in the country wants to be in a swing state, regardless of party. You don't think the Georgia state legislature likes having tens of millions pumped into the state every four years?

[Schiff for Senate]

and there are enough suburbanite moderate Romney/Biden voters who might return to the GOP if Trump isn't the nominee,

LOL

[Progressive Pessimist]

Please don't give them ideas. After all, we'll be lucky if the Supreme Court doesn't give state legislatures the power to allocate electors in a ruling next year.

[BloJo94]

[MarkD]

Not in the near future. I think it would take at least two more election results like the one in 2020 before the GA GOP would start entertaining the idea of adopting a law to always use the congressional district method (like Maine and Nebraska).

[Ferguson97]

No, not because they're unwilling, but because I think by the times Republicans recognize this as necessary, it will be too far gone for them to win even at the gubernatorial level.

[Mr.Phips]

Come to think of it, if Republicans win a trifecta in VA this 2023 (very unlikely IMO), they would be crazy not to do this there.  Unlike GA, that state is totally gone for Republicans in Presidential elections.

[Skill and Chance]

Come to think of it, if Republicans win a trifecta in VA this 2023 (very unlikely IMO), they would be crazy not to do this there.  Unlike GA, that state is totally gone for Republicans in Presidential elections.

Ehhh... tell that to someone in a Biden +12 district (roughly the 20th most conservative state senate district and 51st most conservative lower house district) after they just saw what happened to any 2022 R's who ran on changing election rules or challenging results.  I doubt anyone is going to touch EV allocation for a while after the massive backlash against Mastriano/Lake/Finchem/Marchant. 

[Stranger in a strange land]

Come to think of it, if Republicans win a trifecta in VA this 2023 (very unlikely IMO), they would be crazy not to do this there.  Unlike GA, that state is totally gone for Republicans in Presidential elections.

VA is D-leaning enough at this point that there would be a HUGE backlash and it would at most only be in effect for one cycle (2024) before being overturned after 2025.

[Del Tachi]

I don't think a majority of Georgia Republicans are dense enough to act in such a nakedly partisan way. 

Georgia and Arizona shifting to the left of the nation is enough to bring Democrats even (or maybe even slightly advantaged, depending on how trends in MI/PA/WI develop) in the electoral college.  Maybe both parties will be willing to abolish the electoral college by 2036 or so?   

[S019]

This is something laser eyes Twitter conservatives and no one else wants to see happen.

[OSR stands with Israel]

This is something laser eyes Twitter conservatives and no one else wants to see happen.

Krazan is probably one of the biggest advocates for it and I think really pushed the idea on Twitter too

[Vice President Christian Man]

This is an absurd proposal

[Stranger in a strange land]

Please don't give them ideas. After all, we'll be lucky if the Supreme Court doesn't give state legislatures the power to allocate electors in a ruling next year.

State legislatures have that power now. The only things that are stopping them are that (1) blue states would retaliate and (2) it would be a bridge too far even for many of their supporters.

[Mr.Phips]

Please don't give them ideas. After all, we'll be lucky if the Supreme Court doesn't give state legislatures the power to allocate electors in a ruling next year.

State legislatures have that power now. The only things that are stopping them are that (1) blue states would retaliate and (2) it would be a bridge too far even for many of their supporters.

The only states where Dems hold full control of the legislature are in states that are almost certain to vote for the Dem presidential nominee.