Massive loss of life in Brazil nightclub fire

Last Updated 10:16 p.m. ET

BRASILIA, Brazil Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Firefighters responding to the blaze at first had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because bodies partially blocked the club's entryway.

Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people. Officials at a news conference said the cause was still under investigation — though police inspector Sandro Meinerz told the Agencia Estado news agency the band was to blame for a pyrotechnics show and that manslaughter charges could be filed.

17 Photos

More than 200 die in Brazil nightclub fire

Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.

There was only one way out of the nightclub, and no emergency doors, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan. Some panicked patrons mistook the bathrooms for an escape and died there.

The chaos led to confusion -- security guards briefly blocked the exit fearing that customers were fleeing their bar tabs. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours a community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones looked crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."

Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.

"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.

A man carries an injured man, victim of a fire at the Kiss club in Santa Maria, Brazil, early Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013.

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AP Photo/Agencia RBS

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, a major university city with about 250,000 residents at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

An earlier count put the number of dead at 245.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile.

"It is a tragedy for all of us," Roussef said.

Most of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.

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'Barrier of Bodies' Trapped Nightclub Fire Victims

A fast-moving fire roared through a crowded, windowless nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, filling the air in seconds with flames and a thick, toxic smoke that killed more than 230 panicked partygoers, many of whom were caught in a stampede to escape.

Inspectors believe the blaze began when a band's small pyrotechnics show ignited foam sound insulating material on the ceiling, releasing a putrid haze that caused scores of university students to choke to death. Most victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns in what appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Survivors and the police inspector Marcelo Arigony said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

But Arigony said the guards didn't appear to block fleeing patrons for long. "It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died," he told The Associated Press.

Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance," Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper.

Germano Roratto/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil Nightclub Fire: Nearly 200 People Killed Watch Video

Authorities said band members who were on the stage when the fire broke out later talked with police and confirmed they used pyrotechnics during their show.

Police inspector Sandro Meinerz, who coordinated the investigation at the nightclub, said one band member died after escaping because he returned inside the burning building to save his accordion. The other band members escaped alive because they were the first to notice the fire.

"It was terrible inside — it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another," said Meinerz. "We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away."

Television images from Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people, showed black smoke billowing out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who attended the university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours a community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors. About half of those killed were men, about half women.

The party was organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.

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Get cirrus in the fight against climate change

FEATHERY cirrus clouds are beautiful, but when it comes to climate change, they are the enemy. Found at high-altitude and made of small ice crystals, they trap heat - so more cirrus means a warmer world. Now it seems that, by destroying cirrus, we could reverse all the warming Earth has experienced so far.

In 2009, David Mitchell of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, proposed a radical way to stop climate change: get rid of some cirrus. Now Trude Storelvmo of Yale University and colleagues have used a climate model to test the idea.

Storelvmo added powdered bismuth triiodide into the model's troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which these clouds form. Ice crystals grew around these particles and expanded, eventually falling out of the sky, reducing cirrus coverage. Without the particles, the ice crystals remained small and stayed up high for longer.

The technique, done on a global scale, created a powerful cooling effect, enough to counteract the 0.8 °C of warming caused by all the greenhouse gases released by humans (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50122).

But too much bismuth triiodide made the ice crystals shrink, so cirrus clouds lasted longer. "If you get the concentrations wrong, you could get the opposite of what you want," says Storelvmo. And, like other schemes for geoengineering, side effects are likely - changes in the jet stream, say.

Different model assumptions give different "safe" amounts of bismuth triiodide, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. "Do we really know the system well enough to be confident of being in the safe zone?" he asks. "You wouldn't want to touch this until you knew."

Mitchell says seeding would take 140 tonnes of bismuth triiodide every year, which by itself would cost $19 million.

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All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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India sees push for police reform after rape outcry

NEW DELHI: Sixteen-year-old Seenu was walking to her grandmother's house along a quiet street in northern India when a group of men dragged her into a car, took her to a secluded field and raped her in turns.

They filmed the act on their mobile phones and forced a pill into her mouth. She woke up an hour later, naked, bloodied, disoriented. The sun was just beginning to set as she put on her jeans and made her way back home.

When her father -- a gardener belonging to the "untouchable" or Dalit community which lies at the bottom of India's caste system -- found out what had happened to his only daughter, he killed himself.

Over the days that followed, Seenu (not her real name) and her mother made several trips to the nearest police station, defying threats from her upper-caste attackers, some of whom she knew.

Finally, when the Dalit community in her village held public protests and piled pressure on the police, the first arrest was made -- two weeks after the gang-rape. Since then, seven more men have been arrested.

Now living at her grandmother's home with six police officers as protection ahead of a court appearance next month, Seenu told AFP that rape victims like herself have problems reporting the crime "because police don't respect them".

"It makes me so angry. Why don't the police listen? Why don't they do their job? Why do they have to humiliate the girl or treat her like it's her fault she got raped?" she said, speaking softly so the officers did not overhear.

The gruesome gang-rape and murder of a student in New Delhi on December 16 last year prompted nationwide protests and a public outcry over how police handle sexual assault cases.

A beleaguered central government announced several safety measures earlier this month, including more night-time patrols by police in Delhi and the presence of at least a dozen female officers at every police station.

India suffers from a massive shortfall in the number of police on duty, currently employing only 129 officers per 100,000 people, according to data published in 2010 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

This compares to 227 officers per 100,000 people in the United States.

Also, in many cases police have been found displaying the same sexist prejudices prevalent in Indian society, leading them sometimes to encourage rape survivors to marry their attackers.

Last week, a judge at a Delhi court ordered police to pay 25,000 rupees ($470) as compensation to a 13-year-old rape survivor, for refusing to file a complaint and pushing her to settle the case with the alleged rapist.

J.S. Verma, a former chief justice of India heading a government commission looking into sex crime, lambasted the police on Wednesday for their apathy and "low and skewed priority of dealing with complaints of sexual assault".

In his report, Verma also called for an end to the so-called "two finger test", a practice decried as demeaning and flawed in which doctors attempt to determine if a rape victim is sexually active.

Stung by the hail of criticism, police officials in Delhi recently revived a "gender sensitisation" programme that originally ran from 2008-2011, enrolling all personnel on the course in a bid to improve their handling of women.

Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar promised that the force had been "jolted," leading it to "look at offences against women in a totally different way".

The government's plans to improve policing also include measures to recruit more women, who make up just 6.5 percent of the force, according to figures in the National Crime Records Bureau.

Maurice Nagar police station could be a model for the future. Located near a sprawling university campus, the recruitment of women has long been a priority and a female officer is required to be present at all hours.

The khaki-clad guards outside are female, the officer who registers complaints is female and many of the officers on duty, zipping in and out of traffic on motorbikes are female.

But even here an officer, Nazma Khan, dismisses the notion that police reform is a panacea.

"These crimes happen because of people with a messed-up mentality, who are everywhere," she told AFP.

"If we want to change the mentality then it has to change at school level, at homes, in the family, otherwise recruitment (of police) will not make a difference," she added.

To Seenu, the Dalit teenager whose parents cast off centuries of prejudice and oppression to educate their daughter and raise her to dream of someday becoming a doctor, such arguments offer no consolation.

"If the police don't change, girls like me will never get justice and soon enough, people will just stop expecting any justice in India."

- AFP/fa

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Anonymous: U.S. justice system has 'crossed a line'

A screenshot at 3:35 a.m. ET on January 26, 2013, of the homepage of the United States federal sentencing website after it had been hacked by a group that identified itself as "Anonymous."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. Sentencing Commission website restored


• The FBI is handling the incident as a "criminal investigation"


• Hackers say they have a file of incriminating information ready to launch


• The threat note cited anger over the death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz

(CNN) -- In anger over the recent death of an Internet activist who faced federal charges, hackers claiming to be from the group Anonymous threatened early Saturday to release sensitive information about the U.S. Department of Justice.

They claimed to have one such file on multiple servers ready for immediate release.

The hackers hijacked the website of the U.S. government agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines, where they posted a message demanding the United States reform its justice system or face incriminating leaks to select news outlets.

The lengthy, eloquently written letter was signed "Anonymous."

Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said the bureau was immediately aware of the threat and is "handling it as a criminal investigation."

"We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person('s) or government agency's network," he said.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission said its website was brought down "temporarily" before it was restored later Saturday. "The commission's publications, training materials and federal sentencing statistics are again readily accessible to visitors to the site," it said in a statement.

The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz on January 11 triggered the posting of the hackers' message to the web address of the sentencing commission, they said.

His death, which they blamed on the justice system, "crossed a line," the letter said.

How Aaron Swartz helped build the Internet

A YouTube video accompanied the message, and made use of images from Cold War nuclear scenarios and games of strategy. The letter contained nuclear metaphors to refer to chunks of embarrassing information.

The hackers said they have obtained "enough fissile material for multiple warheads," which it would launch against the Justice Department and "its associated executive branches."

It gave the "warheads" the names of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

'Anonymous' threatens Westboro Baptist

Anonymous accused the FBI of infiltrating its ranks and claimed the federal government is applying "highly disproportionate sentencing" to ruin the lives of some of its members.

Swartz, 26, was facing federal computer fraud charges and could have served 35 years in prison. Anonymous said he "was killed," because he "faced an impossible choice."

His family has issued a statement saying that federal charges filed over allegations that he stole millions of online documents contributed to Swartz's decision to take his own life. The files were mostly scholarly papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Opinion: Why the Net grieves Aaron Swartz

Swartz's suicide has inspired a flurry of online tributes and mobilized Anonymous, the loosely defined collective of so-called "hacktivists" who oppose attempts to limit Internet freedoms. Both Swartz and Anonymous have been stark proponents of open access to information and open-source programming.

A review of a cached version of the USSC.gov website showed the Anonymous message on its homepage early Saturday.

Anonymous also posted an editable version of the website, inviting users to deface it as they pleased. Multiple pages -- not only the home page -- appeared to allow users to alter them.

The "warhead" names appeared as links, most leading to 404 error messages of pages not found, but some leading to pages of raw programming code.

The hackers said they chose the commission's website because of its influence on the doling out of sentences they consider to be unfair.

CNN's Carol Cratty, Jason Moon, AnneClaire Stapleton contributed to this report

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At least 5 die in Chicago shootings

CHICAGO Authorities are investigating the shooting deaths of five people in a single day of bloodshed in Chicago.

Police Officer Daniel O'Brien says Saturday's first killing occurred at around 2:15 a.m. on the city's west side when a gunman opened fire on two men who were sitting in a parked car, killing one and wounding the other.

Investigators say a few hours later, someone opened fire on three men near a South Side eatery, killing two of them and wounding the third.

Detectives were called to the scene of another shooting Saturday afternoon in which a man in his 30s and a teenager were shot to death. There had been no arrests.

Chicago's homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008.

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Squatter, Bank of America Battle for $2.5M Mansion

Bank of America is taking a Florida man to court after he attempted to use an antiquated state law to legally take possession of a $2.5 million mansion that is currently owned by the bank.

Andre "Loki" Barbosa has lived in a five-bedroom Boca Raton, Fla., waterside property since July, and police have reportedly been unable to remove him.

The Brazilian national, 23, who reportedly refers to himself as "Loki Boy," cites Florida's "adverse possession" law, in which a party may acquire title from another by openly occupying their land and paying real property tax for at least seven years.

The house is listed as being owned by Bank of America as of July 2012, and that an adverse possession was filed in July. After Bank of America foreclosed on the property last year, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's Office was notified that Barbosa would be moving in, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The Sun-Sentinel reported that he posted a notice in the front window of the house naming him as a "living beneficiary to the Divine Estate being superior of commerce and usury."
On Facebook, a man named Andre Barbosa calls the property "Templo de Kamisamar."

After Barbosa gained national attention for his brazen attempt, Bank of America filed an injunction on Jan. 23 to evict Barbosa and eight unidentified occupants.

In the civil complaint, Bank of America said Barbosa and other tenants "unlawfully entered the property" and "refused to permit the Plaintiff agents entry, use, and possession of its property." In addition to eviction, Bank of America is asking for $15,000 in damages to be paid to cover attorney's expenses.

Police were called Dec. 26 to the home but did not remove Barbosa, according to the Sentinel. Barbosa reportedly presented authorities with the adverse possession paperwork at the time.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Povery Law Center, says police officers may be disinclined to take action even if they are presented with paperwork that is invalid.

"A police officer walks up to someone who is claiming a house now belongs to him, without any basis at all, is handed a big sheaf of documents, which are incomprehensible," Potok said. "I think very often the officers ultimately feel that they're forced to go back to headquarters and try to figure out what's going on before they can actually toss someone in the slammer."

A neighbor of the Boca property, who asked not be named, told ABCNews.com that he entered the empty home just before Christmas to find four people inside, one of whom said the group is establishing an embassy for their mission, and that families would be moving in and out of the property. Barbosa was also among them.

The neighbor said he believes that Barbosa is a "patsy."

"This young guy is caught up in this thing," the neighbor said. "I think it's going on on a bigger scale."

Barbosa could not be reached for comment.

The neighbor said that although the lights have been turned on at the house, the water has not, adding that this makes it clear it is not a permanent residence. The neighbor also said the form posted in the window is "total gibberish," which indicated that the house is an embassy, and that those who enter must present two forms of identification, and respect the rights of its indigenous people.

"I think it's a group of people that see an opportunity to get some money from the bank," the neighbor said. "If they're going to hold the house ransom, then the bank is going to have to go through an eviction process.

"They're taking advantage of banks, where the right hand doesn't know where the left hand is," the neighbor said. "They can't clap."

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Today on New Scientist: 25 January 2013

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Watch the first sighting of a seal's underwater eating habits spotted by a teenager watching a live video feed

World's oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind

A 26,000-year-old carved ivory head of a woman is not just an archaeological find - a new exhibition in London wants us to see works like this as art

Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way

Forget the Pole Star: on moonless nights dung beetles use the Milky Way to follow a straight path with their dung ball

Stress's impact can affect future generations' genes

DNA analysis has yielded the first direct evidence that chemical marks which disable genes in response to stress can be passed on to offspring

Uncharted territory: Where digital maps are leading us

The way we use maps is evolving fast, says Kat Austen, and it will change a great deal more than how we navigate

Feedback: Tales of the stony turd industry

Fossilised faeces in Shitlington, confusing railway notices, organic water, and more

Duolingo gives language learning a jump start

First evidence that Duolingo, a new website that helps you learn a language while translating the web, actually works

Dolphins form life raft to help dying friend

A group of dolphins was caught on camera as they worked together to keep a struggling dolphin above water by forming an impromptu raft

Zoologger: Supercool squirrels go into the deep freeze

Hibernating Arctic ground squirrels drop their body temperatures to -4 °C, and shut their circadian clocks off for the winter

Greek economic crisis has cleared the air

The ongoing collapse of Greece's economy has caused a significant fall in air pollution, which can be detected by satellites

Body armour to scale up by mimicking flexible fish

Armour that is designed like the scales of the dragon fish could keep soldiers protected - while still letting them bend

Astrophile: Split personality tarnishes pulsars' rep

Pulsars were seen as cosmic timekeepers, but the quirky way in which one example shines suggests we can't take their behaviour for granted

Shrinking proton puzzle persists in new measurement

The most precise experiment yet to find the proton's radius confirms that it can appear smaller than our theories predict - is new physics needed?

Tight squeeze forces cells to take their medicine

A short sharp squash in these channels and a cell's membrane pops open - good news when you want to slip a molecule or nanoparticle in there

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Cycling: Armstrong lied to Oprah, says doping chief

LOS ANGELES: Lance Armstrong lied in his confessional interview with Oprah Winfrey and the shamed cyclist has two weeks to finally come clean, the US anti-doping official who pursued him for years has said.

Travis Tygart said in an excerpt of an interview with the CBS network that Armstrong failed to tell Winfrey the truth about several key points over doping -- including a claim that he raced drug-free in his comeback in 2009 and 2010.

Tygart, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) chief, said he has written to Armstrong to say that if he wants to lessen his lifetime sporting ban he must "cooperate fully and truthfully" by February 6, about drug-taking in the sport.

It is not clear if cooperation from Armstrong, who was stripped of all seven of his Tour De France wins last year, could take the form of testimony before a truth and reconciliation commission.

The International Cycling Union (UCI), which is under pressure from the World Anti-Doping Agency and USADA, on Friday agreed that such a platform would benefit the drug-damaged sport after a series of devastating doping cases.

Armstrong, a cancer survivor who during the Oprah interview admitted doping for the first time after years of vehement denials, said he would be willing to testify before such a commission if he were invited.

He also said that his record seven wins in the tour -- between 1999-2005 -- were fueled by performance enhancing drugs but insisted he was clean when he came out of retirement and raced in the Tour de France in 2009 and 2010.

Tygart, however, in the CBS interview which will air in full on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, said the latter claim is "just contrary to the evidence".

According to Tygart, expert reports based on the variation of Armstrong's blood values in 2009 and 2010 make it a "one to a million chance that it was due to something other than doping".

The USADA chief reiterated the assertions in the report issued last year by the agency on which it based its lifetime ban of Armstrong and the forfeiture of all his cycling results from August 1998.

The report led to Armstrong's demise after more than a decade of denials that he was a drug cheat during which he pursued a series of vitriolic attacks against several individuals who had accused him of doping.

Tygart told CBS that Armstrong may have lied about doping after his comeback because under the statute of limitations for criminal fraud, he would still be open to prosecution.

He also took issue with Armstrong's claim that the disgraced Texan's favored drug cocktail of blood-boosting EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone included just a small amount of EPO.

"He used a lot of EPO," Tygart told "60 Minutes", alleging that Armstrong was less than truthful when he told Winfrey that he had not pushed his teammates toward cheating.

"He was the boss," Tygart said in the excerpt.

"The evidence is clear he was one of the ringleaders of this conspiracy that pulled off this grand heist that... using tens of millions of taxpayer dollars defrauded millions of sports fans and his fellow competitors."

In the second segment of his interview with Winfrey, which aired over two nights on January 18-19, the 41-year-old Armstrong said he wants to compete again in sport -- perhaps marathons.

Immediately after Armstrong's first confession aired last week Tygart responded by saying that the former cyclist must testify under oath to have any hope of reducing his sanction.

"His admission that he doped throughout his career is a small step in the right direction," Tygart said.

"But if he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities."

- AFP/fa

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RNC chief 'intrigued' by proposed electoral change

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: A spokesman for the Virginia governor says he does not support the proposal


• GOP state legislatures consider changing how they allocate electoral votes


• The proposed changes would have hurt President Obama in last year's election


• A similar push followed the hotly contested 2000 presidential election

Washington (CNN) -- If at first you don't succeed, try to change the rules.

A proposal under consideration in Virginia's Republican-led state Legislature would change how the commonwealth allocates its 13 electoral votes in the wake of Democratic President Barack Obama's re-election last November.

Obama won the popular vote in the crucial battleground state to claim all 13 electoral votes, even though GOP challenger Mitt Romney beat him in seven of the 11 congressional districts.

Under the proposed alternative system, electoral votes would get divvied up by congressional districts won. In addition, Virginia's two other electoral votes -- one for each U.S. Senate seat -- would go to the candidate who won the most congressional districts.

If the district-based system had been in effect in Virginia last year, Romney would have gotten nine electoral votes to four for Obama.

Jindal urges GOP to stop being 'stupid'

While a subcommittee has advanced the Virginia proposal, skepticism expressed by some GOP state senators raised doubts that it would proceed any further.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, does not support the plan, according to his spokesman.

"He believes Virginia's existing system works just fine as it is. He does not believe there is any need for a change," Tucker Martin said in statement.

However, Reince Priebus, newly re-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the idea worth examining.

"I think it is a state issue, but personally I'm pretty intrigued by it," he told reportersFriday.

Opinion: Where the stupidity really lies

The state party chairman in Florida, Lenny Curry, questioned the wisdom of such a move at a time when the party is trying to broaden its support.

"It seems to me we ought to be focused on connecting with voters and bringing them into our party versus trying to change the game," Curry said.

To Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics, the concept doesn't violate democratic principles, but he called it a bad idea.

"Close elections would likely always result in extensive recounts, we could see huge disparities between the popular and electoral vote, and the partisan motive behind it would be transparent," he wrote Friday on the group's website.

Currently, only Nebraska and Maine use a district-based plan for allocating electoral votes.

Their systems differ from the Virginia proposal by awarding the two additional electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, rather than who won the most districts. Last year, both split their electoral votes between Obama and Romney.

Other GOP-controlled state legislatures reportedly contemplating changes to their electoral vote allocation include Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Under the Electoral College system, each state is worth a certain number of electoral votes based on population. Winning the presidency requires a majority of the electoral vote, regardless of who wins the popular vote.

States have the power to decide how their electoral votes get allocated, the National Conference of State Legislatures noted on its website.

It cited a similar push for change after the 2000 election, when Democratic Vice President Al Gore won the national popular vote but lost the electoral vote, and therefore the decision, to Republican George W. Bush.

From 2001 to 2006, bills proposing adoption of the district system were introduced in many states, but failed to pass, according to the NCSL website. Both Maine and Nebraska adopted their district-based systems before 2000.

The issue reflects the regionalization of America's deep partisan divide, with splits in many states between populous urban areas that tend to be more liberal and larger, less populated rural areas that generally are more conservative.

In Virginia, Obama got strong support in two heavily populated northern districts close to Washington as well as a district that includes much of Richmond and Norfolk. Romney won more rural districts in the central, southern and western parts of the state.

Overall in Virginia, Obama got 51% of the total vote -- more than 1.97 million -- compared to Romney's 1.82 million for 47% of the total.

CNN's Mark Preston and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

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