RNC Chair: Rig The Next Presidential Election For Republicans

THINK PROGRESS

A little over a year ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) proposed rigging the presidential election for Mitt Romney by allocating electoral votes based upon which candidate carried each individual congressional district, rather than upon who wins the state as a whole. Thanks in large part to Republican gerrymandering, if Corbett’s election-rigging plan had been in effect last November in the Republican-controlled states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, Romney would have won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did not simply endorse this election-rigging scheme, he indicated that it should be targeted towards consistently Democratic states where it is most likely to skew the presidential election to the GOP’s benefit:

Republicans are in a unique position to make headway with such a plan nationally because Wisconsin and other key states that have gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in recent elections are currently controlled by Republicans at the state level. The change would give Republicans a chance to claim some of those states’ electoral votes.
“I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at,” Priebus said of the plan to change how electoral votes are granted.
Such a system “gives more local control” to the states, he argued.

This would not be the GOP’s only effort to rig elections so that they win no matter what the will of the American people may be. Last November, Democratic House candidates won the national popular vote by nearly 1.4 million votes. Yet, thanks to Republican gerrymandering, they would need to win the popular vote by over seven points in order to take back the House.