The vote in a Privileges and Elections subcommittee was 3-3, with Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier, siding with the two Democrats on the six-member panel to produce a tie. The legislation now heads to the full committee, where a 10-5 GOP majority is likely to send it to the floor of the full Senate for a vote.
Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr., R-Grayson, the sponsor of Senate Bill 723, said he brought the bill because his rural constituents feel "that their voices are not heard" in presidential elections. He said currently only Maine and Nebraska award electoral votes based on the turnout in each congressional district. Maine and Nebraska also award the statewide winner two electoral votes.
Sen. John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke said switching to an apportionment system has the potential for "a really skewed election" in which a presidential candidate could win the popular vote in the state but in a state like Virginia, still lose eight or nine of the state's 13 electoral votes based on congressional district results.
Critics of the legislation, this time around mostly Democrats, have labeled the bill and others like it "sore losers bills" considering the victory of President Barack Obama in the commonwealth in 2012.
Despite a solid popular vote victory in 2012, an apportionment of Virginia's electoral vote would have given Obama only four votes to 9 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Sen. Thomas Garrett, R-Louisa, said changing the electoral apportionment system would drive greater interest of presidential politicians to other areas of the commonwealth. "All these small localities will be brought into the process," he said, noting that Sen. John C. Miller, D-Newport News proposed similar legislation in 2008.
"There's no partisan ax to grind here," he said
But Sen. J. Chapman Petersen, D-Fairfax said the current state of partisan redistricting would effectively disenfranchise the will of the people under an apportionment system
"You have packed all Democrats in the state into three congressional districts -- the deck is stacked," Petersen told fellow committee members.
He said the idea would have more appeal if state lawmakers were willing to "unstack the deck" and go to a nonpartisan redistricting procedure that didn't favor one party over another. Until then, he said, he can't "suspend my intelligence" and vote for the bill.
The most recent congressional redistricting strengthened Republicans' control of eight of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.
Original Article
Source: huffington post
Author: Jim Nolan
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