How Swing-State Republicans Are Already Trying to Rig the Next Presidential Election

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages

It's no secret that the United States is undergoing a major demographic shift, and it doesn't bode well for Republicans' future presidential prospects. But rather than championing policies that appeal to America's increasingly diverse electorate, the GOP is opting for a strategy to suppress the voters they're afraid of.

Last election cycle, Rolling Stone contributor Ari Berman outlined the slew of tactics Republicans employed to block President Obama's base from getting to the polls – from racist voter ID laws to onerous limits on early voting. This effort failed miserably, and the president easily won re-election on the shoulders of students, blue-collar workers and people of color.

For Republicans, this apparently means revisiting the vote suppression drawing board. Republican legislators in several key states have devised a new plan to take back the White House in 2016: rigging the electoral system in favor of their party's presidential candidates.

Conservative lawmakers in five crucial swing states are pushing legislation that would apportion electoral votes by congressional district, instead of the traditional, winner-takes-all system currently used by all but two states. The GOP-controlled statehouses of Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are all reportedly considering plans to make the switch.

What do these five states have in common? They all voted for Obama in 2012, with significant support from non-white voters. The proposed electoral overhaul would dramatically strengthen the power of rural, white voters and stifle the voices of the urban residents who elected and re-elected our nation's first black president.

Consider the case of Michigan, a state that Obama won by more than 400,000 votes. The president received particularly strong support in Michigan districts 13 and 14, which together make up the city of Detroit. These districts contain millions of voters, who turn out to the polls at a substantially higher rate than many of their rural neighbors. Yet under the Republicans' proposed rules, each of the urban districts would get just one electoral vote, the same as any of Michigan's overwhelmingly white, rural districts. Mitt Romney would have swept those areas, carrying nine of Michigan's 16 electoral votes to Obama's seven, despite losing the state's popular vote by nearly 10 points. Detroit, where minorities make up 89 percent of the population, according to the 2010 Census, would have been rendered effectively irrelevant.

As commentators including The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie and The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates have noted, these Republican proposals would drastically weaken the effectiveness of Democratic Get Out the Vote campaigns in urban areas. Votes in Detroit – or Cincinnati, or Richmond, or Milwaukee – simply would not count as much as votes in less diverse areas. It's a scary echo of the Jim Crow era, when racist lawmakers put restrictions in place to devalue African-American votes.

And this campaign isn't merely being waged by some lowly state senators. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is all for electoral rigging: "I think it's something that a lot of states th­at have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Last week, Virginia lawmakers made headlines by trying to sneak in a bill that would have enacted this type of deplorable change in the rules. The measure is so blatantly wrong-headed that even Virginia's Republican governor denounced it. But clearly, much more action is needed before we can be sure that Republicans won't succeed in changing the rules of democracy in their favor.

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Don't Ask, Don't Tell: 11 Big Questions That Were MIA at the Presidential Debates

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama participate in the third and final Presidential Debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.

The 2012 presidential debates were a national disgrace.

Forget that two of moderators were doddering old white men who allowed themselves to be steamrolled by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. (You only have to be 35 to run for president, yet the average age of the moderators was somehow 72.)

The real scandal is that the moderators guided us through three contests without touching on many of the most critical issues confronting the American electorate.

Here, based on a review of the transcripts, the 11 biggest questions that never came up on the debate stage:

CLIMATE
The candidates were never asked about climate change, whether they believe it poses an existential threat to our future, and what, if anything, they'd do halt it.

THE HOUSING CRISIS
The root cause of the financial collapse of 2008 was the housing bubble. The foreclosure crisis remains a drag on our economy. Obama's efforts to aid underwater homeowners have been feckless. Romney declared the market should be allowed to "hit bottom." The moderators thought none of this worthy of discussion.

THE EUROZONE
The European economy is in crisis. The common currency is in danger of collapse. Would the next American president intervene to save the Eurozone? Who knows?! Certainly not debate watchers.

SUPREME COURT
The next president will pick at least one and perhaps two Supreme Court justices — but neither presidential candidate was asked anything about what principles would inform his choices for the court.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE
This election has been waged with ungodly sums of SuperPAC money, leaving both candidates beholden to megadonors. But neither candidate was asked to weigh in on the Citizens United decision that equates money with speech.

GAY MARRIAGE
Gay marriage is on the ballot from Maryland to Washington state. It first became legal in Massachusetts (over Romney's objections) and Obama made history by personally backing marriage equality. The Defense of Marriage Act is headed for a date with the Supreme Court. Yet there was not a single question about whether same sex-couples deserve equal protection.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL
Obama made an offhanded boast about its repeal, but there was no line of inquiry from the moderators about whether gays and lesbians would continue to be welcome in the Armed Forces under a Romney presidency.

ABORTION
There was no effort to clarify where each candidate stands on Roe v. Wade. (The subject of abortion surfaced briefly in the Vice Presidential debate, but as a personal issue — as a lens for the candidates' Catholic faith.) A low information voter could have watched all three presidential debates and come away thinking there's no meaningful difference on choice, beyond Mitt Romney's plan to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

THE FED
Ben Bernanke is the most powerful Federal Reserve chairman in living memory and has more direct influence over the unemployment rate than anyone. Romney has said he'd replace him. Why — and what kind of monetary policy he'd seek — remain open questions.

THE DRUG WAR
Marijuana legalization is on the ballot in three states. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have been killed in drug violence connected to American consumption, for which we continue to incarcerate an insane number of Americans. Yet there was not a single question about the efficacy of the 40-year, $1 trillion War on Drugs.

TAX EVASION
Mitt Romney's tax returns have been a central campaign focus since the GOP primaries. They came up repeatedly in the Republican debates, yet didn't pique the curiosity of the general-election moderators. (Get a detailed look at how Romney avoids paying his fair share.)

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