Gov. Rick Snyder is no Chris Christie when it come to straight talking.
Brian Dickerson of the Free Press discovered that when he asked Snyder about GOP schemes to change how Michigan’s popular vote translates to electoral votes in presidential elections.
Republicans, who control the state Legislature, could revive a project to change the way Michigan’s 16 electoral votes are allocated in time for the 2016 presidential election, as Democrats suspect they are plotting to do late this year in the Legislature’s lame-duck session.
As a result, the next GOP presidential nominee could lose Michigan’s popular vote but still come away with most of its electoral votes. Republicans might dare to try that radical change because they keep losing the presidential elections in Michigan, and demographics seem to predict more loses in the future.
“I don’t do hypotheticals,” Snyder said when Dickerson asked him, during a year-end visit with the Free Press Editorial Board, about whether he would sign a bill that awarded Michigan’s electoral votes by congressional district.
Here is how part of their exchange went:
Dickerson: If the Legislature were to pass legislation assigning Michigan’s presidential electors by congressional district, would you sign it?
Snyder: Well, again, I don’t do hypotheticals like that. What I’m happy to share with you on that is I think I have some real issues and concerns about the concept of changing the methodology. Not necessarily the methodology, but the timing of a change of that methodology.
It’s a different question when you’re in the middle of a period changing rules like that versus saying, if you look to say a census was coming and it was going to apply to everybody fairly and no one knew the answer for sure, that’s a different kind of question.
