The National Review posted an article on Friday stating that if states apportioned their Electoral College votes by district, the Republicans could win the White House in 2016. Thanks, but no thanks.

The article states:

Starting in January, Republicans will hold state legislative majorities and the governor’s mansions in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, and Nevada. If some or all of those states passed laws allocating their electoral votes by districts, all of these purple-to-blue states would allocate their electoral votes in a way that would make it extremely likely for Republicans to win at least half of them. And without half the electoral votes in those states, it would nearly impossible for the Democratic nominee to win.

For example, Barack Obama won Ohio twice, and because he won the popular vote in 2012, won all of the state’s 18 electoral votes. Under the district system, if the Republican presidential nominee wins all of the U.S. House districts in Ohio currently held by the GOP, he would get twelve electoral votes and the Democrat would get only six.

…Any state’s change to this more proportional system would be entirely constitutional. When Barack Obama won one of Nebraska’s electoral votes in 2008, no one on the Democratic side complained.

Although I can understand the logic of this, I think it is a really bad idea to tinker with the Electoral College. For example, without the Electoral College, Rhode Island, Montana, Wyoming, and several other states would never see a Presidential candidate. They would have essentially no voice in national elections. If we begin tinkering with the Electoral College, I suspect it will be the first step on the road to abolishing it. I think that is a really bad idea.