Changes proposed in electoral college

The Virginia House passed a bill that would change how electoral college votes would be allocated in the state - the Pennsylvania legislature attempted a similar change in 2011.

Here's a description from a VA TV station:

The bill would apportion electors by congressional district to the candidate who wins each of the state's 11 districts. The candidate who carries a majority of the districts would also win the two electors not tied to congressional districts.
    
Sen. Charles W. "Bill" Carrico, R-Grayson, said the change is necessary because Virginia's populous, urbanized areas such as the Washington, D.C., suburbs and Hampton Roads can outvote rural regions such as his, rendering their will irrelevant.
    
Last fall, President Barack Obama carried Virginia for the second election in a row, making him the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win Virginia in back-to-back presidential elections. For his victories, he received all 13 of the state's electoral votes.
    
Under Carrico's revision, Obama would have received only four Virginia electoral votes last year while Republican Mitt Romney would have received nine. Romney carried conservative rural areas while Obama dominated Virginia's cities and fast-growing suburbs.
    
Virginia would be only the third state after Maine and Nebraska to apportion electors according to congressional districts, and by far the largest. Maine has only two U.S. House districts, and Nebraska has three.
    
Unlike the other two states, however, Virginia is covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, passed during the civil rights era. The act seeks to ensure that states with a history of racial discrimination - mostly in the South - do not dilute the voting power of minorities. That means Carrico's bill would face scrutiny by the Obama's Justice Department should it become law.

So the shift is not unprecedented since the method is used in two states already, but the fact that the district in Virginia are heavily gerrymandered means that the results will be heavily skewed. This has raised concerns in some quarters. The electoral college may become a tool that can be manipulated to achieve whatever outcome a powerful faction may wish to engineer.

Wonkblog has a great overview of the issues involved in this shift.