As a general rule, the candidate who receives the most votes in an election is declared the winner. But that would all change if the Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell gets his way and states start adopting a vote-rigging scheme that he is recommending whereby, in a presidential election, electoral votes would switch from winner-take-all allocations to a system where they were awarded according to congressional districts.
As a result of such a switch, candidates who lose the overall popular vote in a state could still end up receiving a majority of that state’s electoral votes simply by virtue of winning the popular vote in more individual districts.
As Blackwell admitted several months ago, if this sort of system had been in place during the last election, Mitt Romney would have won the presidency despite the fact that he lost the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million votes.
David Barton has eagerly been supporting the scheme by laughably claiming that it would “give the people a greater voice” and last night he got Glenn Beck to endorse it as well on his television program:
