Ultimately, what Pileggi’s plan does is extend to the states the electoral college’s bias against popular-vote majorities. The electoral college, after all, was created out of a compromise so that Southern whites wouldn’t be outvoted by Northerners in the House of Representatives or in presidential elections. The compromise was to tally slaves in apportioning congressional districts among the states, and then award the presidency to the winner of the states’ electoral vote, not of the nationwide popular count. In 2000, Al Gore won half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but through the magic of electoral-college apportionment and a Republican Supreme Court, Bush won the White House. Under this new Republican scheme, candidates who win a state’s popular votes could still lose the majority of its electoral votes.

Considered in tandem with the drive to reduce voting among minorities and low-income citizens, the emerging Republican opposition to popular-vote democracy makes long-term strategic sense. With each year, the nation’s population and electorate become less white, even as the Republican Party becomes more and more a white folks’ party.