Officials in Virginia and Ohio, once reliably red states that have gone for President Obama in the past two elections, have discussed the idea of apportioning their electoral votes by congressional district -- a system some say would more accurately reflect the will of the states’ voters but one that others dismiss as an unnecessary political ploy.

The talks come as demographic shifts have pushed the GOP’s reliable bastions to more exurban and rural areas, allowing Democrats to win such states by sufficiently running up their margins in a comparatively small number of densely-populated cities and counties.

To that end, Virginia state Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr., Grayson Republican, has introduced a bill that would award one electoral vote to the winner of each of the state’s 11 congressional districts, and the state’s two at-large votes to the candidate that wins the majority of the districts.

Mr. Carrico cited the results in the southwestern 9th Congressional District -- where Mitt Romney won 63 percent of the vote -- as part of the reason he introduced the bill.

“People in my district -- they feel discouraged by coming out because their votes don’t mean anything if they’re outvoted in metropolitan districts,” Mr. Carrico said. “It can go either way -- it doesn’t necessarily mean that one political party is going to be favored over another. When they come out to vote, they know their vote counts instead of a winner-take-all. I’d love to see other states to do this because I don’t feel the Electoral College right now is a fair system.”

To Mr. Carrico’s point, Mr. Obama won a slightly higher percentage of Virginia’s vote in 2008 than President George W. Bush did in 2000 -- 52.62 percent to 52.47 percent -- but won just 48 of the state’s 134 localities, compared to Mr. Bush’s 104. He won even fewer this year -- 46 -- but still carried the state with 51 percent of the vote.

Under Mr. Carrico’s proposal, Mitt Romney would have won nine electoral votes to Mr. Obama’s four, as Democrats are largely clustered in the state’s population hubs of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads. President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 had been the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia before Mr. Obama broke through in 2008.

Forty-eight states, plus the District of Columbia, use winner-take-all systems to distribute their electoral votes. In Nebraska and Maine, each district gets one vote and the statewide winner receives two at-large votes. In 2008, Mr. Obama actually benefited from the quirk, picking up an extra vote by winning Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District by 3,000 votes -- marking the only time in history that either of the two states have not awarded all their votes to one candidate.

READ FULL SOURCE ARTICLE: 12/08/2012

Editor's Note: Messing with the Electoral College for political purposes is a very dangerous thing to do. Progressives are already attempting to circumvent this check and balance created by the Framers. Read more about that here.