You mentioned Maine and Nebraska, those two do a district-based approach. And swing disctricts don't really make things better. Last year, 14 or so states were seriously contested by one side or the other. Everyone in those states were targeted, that's a lot of people. Do you really think it'd be that many if we go by districts, many of which are gerrymandered?
Yeah, that was an error on my part to mention Maine/Nebraska when I was really more in favor of a proportional allocation system.
But even still, I think it a district based system would target more people simply because the media outlets are not only district based. The TV and newspaper coverage often encompass many more districts than just the contested ones.
Take Chicago for example. The 10th district is historically a left-leaning swing district (represented by a republican since 2001). In order to target the 10th district, they would need to end up targeting ALL of the Chicagoland area districts that are covered by the same media outlets as well. The Chicagoland media area is not just Northeast Illinois. It reaches parts of Indian, Wisconsin and Michigan as well.
So targeting one swing district would vicariously cause about 10 million other people to receive the same degree of targeting as well.
At the very least, this will mean that more people are given the same attention that those 14 states did, and it would probably reach all 50 states to some degree.
So even if someone lives in a different district that wouldn't be contested, they are going to receive the same inundation of information that the people who are in the swing district will receive.
Plus, they will be MORE likely to have their vote actually count. Under the current system, someone in the 10th voting against the majority of the state, will not have their vote count. The rest of the Chicagoland area alone negates their vote.
So the benefits to having a district-based system still outweigh the benefits of the current system, although proportional allocation would be prefereable still in my opinion.
Quite frankly, I'm not interested in influencing Alabama's, Wyoming's, or California's systems. I only want to see a change to Illinois' system. If Alabama wants to make it winner take all, that should be their prerogative. If California wants to go by disticts, that should be their prerogative. If Wyoming wanted to give all of their votes to the Republicans on years when the groundhog sees it's shadow and all of them to the Democrats on the years it doesn't, so be it. It's none of my business.
My business is what Illinois does. I think the system was created to limit the influence of government on the individual based on proximity. I think this is a good system.
As time went on, the system got flipped around. Right now, there is no clear hierarchy of influence. The federal and state level authority has grown to include many things which it shouldn't include.
I believe in maximizing the authority locally and decreasing it as the sphere's of influence increase in size. The farther away from the individual the decisions are made, the less influence those decisions should have on that individual.