"So what's to stop Republicans in total control of a big state that is an important key to a Democrat's presidential calculus ... from changing the rules? With enough political will, nothing."

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A rule change that could lock Republican 2016 victory
BBC, November 10, 2014

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One of the less publicised results of the sweeping victories Republicans achieved in mid-term elections last week was that they now control the government in 24 states.

Not only does this have a significant effect on the day-to-day lives of the states' citizens, it also opens the possibility to an entirely legal move that could virtually ensure that a Republicans wins the White House in 2016.

To understand why, you first have to know a little bit about how US presidents are elected. Each state is apportioned a certain number of electoral "votes" based on the number of seats in the House they have plus the number of senators (two). Consequently, states with larger populations have more influence on who becomes president.

California (55), Texas (38) and Florida (29), for instance, are electoral prizes. Low-population states like Delaware, Wyoming and Montana, on the other hand, merit little attention, with only three votes apiece.

Almost all of these states give their electoral votes based on a winner-take-all system. A candidate receiving 50.1% of the vote in New York, for instance, will garner the state's 29 votes. Collect 270 total votes, and the presidency is assured.

As the National Review's Jim Geraghty explains, however, there is no constitutional requirement that states allot their electoral votes this way. They could do it based on a simple vote in the statehouse. They could even, legally, decide to apportion them based on a coin flip, or whichever candidate is taller.

Both Maine and Nebraska, for instance, divvy their votes based on the winner of individual congressional districts.

In 2008, this meant that Barack Obama received one of Nebraska's five electoral votes, thanks to winning the congressional district around Omaha.

So what's to stop Republicans in total control of a big state that is an important key to a Democrat's presidential calculus - such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania or Florida - from changing the rules? With enough political will, nothing.

Geraghty analyses what it would have meant in 2012's presidential election.

"In Michigan, Obama won all 16 of the state's electoral votes; if the Republican 2016 nominee won all the currently GOP-held House districts, he would get nine and the Democrat would get seven," he writes.

If enough Obama states had done it this way, Mitt Romney would be in the Oval Office

In the past, there's always been the fear that if one party tried this manoeuvre, the other would follow suit in states where a electoral change would be more favourable to their candidate. But there are currently zero reliably conservative presidential states in Democratic control. And prospects for that changing in some big, reliably conservative prize, like Texas, seem remote.

The Republicans, in other words, hold all the cards.

Geraghty notes that state legislators may be reluctant to make this change because it would lessen their importance as key presidential battlegrounds.

And Vox's Matthew Yglesias points out that this idea isn't exactly new - Republicans in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have floated the idea and pulled back after sharp criticism for electoral gamesmanship.

"It's just an idea that so massively violates the established norms of American politics that nobody's gone through with it," he writes.

Republicans have been emboldened by their mid-term success, however. And they know that the electorate in 2016 will be more favourable to Democrats than the voters in this year's low-turnout mid-terms.

With the possibility of total control of the US government within grasp, is it so unlikely to think that today's Republican Party - at least in a state or two - might consider it a risk worth taking?
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