THINK PROGRESS
Last month, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus called up
“states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red”
to rig future presidential elections
by changing the way electoral votes are allocated. Under Priebus’
proposal, blue states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would
stop awarding electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole,
and instead would award them one-by-one to the winner of each
congressional district. Meanwhile, red states would continue to award
100 percent of their electors to the Republican. This plan appears to
have lost steam, however, as several top Republicans in key states announced they will not support it.
Even as Republicans in key states such as Michigan, Ohio, Florida and
Virginia came out against this election-rigging plan, however,
Pennsylvania Republicans have been eerily quite. We now know why.
According to the New Castle News a local paper in western
Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) will introduce
legislation this month that will effectively give away a large chuck of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate, regardless of who wins the state as a whole.
How This Election-Rigging Plan Works
Unlike the plan Priebus backs, the New Republican Plan would not tie
electoral votes to congressional districts. Instead, it would award the
overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes proportionally
according to the popular vote, with two additional electoral votes going
to the winner of the state as a whole. If the New Republican Plan had
been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 8 of Pennsylvania’ 20 electoral votes, despite losing the state by a substantial margin.
The problem with the New Republican Plan is that it would only be
enacted in blue states such as Pennsylvania — the Democratic candidate
for presidential won Pennsylvania in every single election for the past two decades
— while red states would continue to award all of their electoral votes
to the Republican. Thus, the plan gives away Democratic votes to the
Republican for free, while letting the Republican candidate keep all the
votes they earn legitimately in other states:.....................
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