GOP Electoral Vote Scheme Still Alive And Kicking In Pennsylvania
Source: TPM
BENJY SARLIN FEBRUARY 18, 2013, 5:46 AM
After debuting with great fanfare, an RNC-backed scheme to rig the electoral college in blue states to favor Republican presidential candidates is looking mostly dead. But, to quote the Princess Bride, “there’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.” Enter Pennsylvania, where an electoral vote bill is more than slightly alive.
State Senate president Dominic Pileggi (R) is pushing a plan to change Pennsylvania’s current winner-take-all allocation of the state’s 20 electoral votes to a system that apportions them proportionally by each candidate’s share of the statewide vote. Had it gone into effect before the 2012 election, President Obama would have won just 12 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 8. According to a memo Pileggi wrote debuting his new plan, the revamped system “much more accurately reflects the will of the voters in our state.”
Pileggi’s bill is slightly less far-reaching a power grab than bills proposed in states like Virginia that would have divided electoral votes by congressional district, which thanks to gerrymandering strongly favors Republicans even in states Obama won handily. This is by design: Pileggi pitched a congressional district split along the lines of the Virginia bill in 2011 only to face near-unanimous opposition from Republican members of Congress in the state who feared Democrats would pour millions of dollars into winning their individual districts. While Pileggi has shifted on the issue, a pair of Pennsylvania state representatives have also introduced a congressional split version since the election.
But the biggest difference that sets Pennsylvania apart is that each of the top leaders necessary to pass a bill have expressed support for changing its electoral college. Gov. Tom Corbett (R) strongly backed Pileggi’s 2011 effort. So did state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R), best known nationally for bragging that voter ID restrictions opposed by civil rights groups would help Romney win the state in 2012. By contrast, similar electoral vote bills elsewhere hit a wall this year after Republican statehouse leaders, key lawmakers, or governors indicated their opposition.
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Read more: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/gop-electoral-vote-scheme-still-alive-and-kicking-in-pennsylvania.php
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If they had this system in Pennsylvania and 6 other blue states (as far as the presidential election) that the Republicans control (the governorship and both legislature houses)
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http://www.freespeech.org/text/rigging-democracy
According to the above article, had such a plan (each congressional district's winner gets that electoral vote and the 2 senatorial electoral votes go to the winner of the most congressional districts) been enacted in 2012 in all seven swing states now under Republican control (the 6 states in the graphic above plus North Carolina), Mitt Romney’s 126-vote defeat in the Electoral College would have been transformed into a 16-vote victory.
(FWIW, North Carolina went for Romney and thus gave him all its electoral votes ... had North Carolina stayed winner-take-all, while the 6 states on the graphic above went to allocation by congressional district, then the electoral margin victory for Mitt Romney would be more than 16 votes).
