In Pennsylvania, ThinkProgress warns that the latest version of Republicans' plan to rig the electoral college has been introduced into the state Senate:

Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) was one of the earliest supporters of rigging the Electoral College, backing a plan to do so as early as 2011. Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi was one of the leading supporters of election-rigging the and late this week, he — along with a dozen other co-sponsors — introduced a new plan to rig the Electoral College votes in his blue state of Pennsylvania. Under this legislation, a large chunk of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes would be awarded to the Republican candidate even though Pennsylvania is a solid blue state that has supported the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1992.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is reporting that Michigan Republicans are 100 percent behind a similar effort there:

The electoral college rigging scheme that drew criticism of cheating and was disavowed by many prominent Republicans now has the official backing of more than 1,300 Michigan Republicans.

According to the Detroit Free-Press, at the GOP party convention in Lansing this weekend more than 90% of Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to change the electoral vote distribution process from winner-take-all to one in which 14 of the state’s votes went to the winner in each congressional district. The final two votes would go to the state’s overall winner.

As we reported earlier this year, that planwould have given Mitt Romney 9 of the states 16 electoral votes, despite the fact that he lost the state by 9%.

But not all Republicans are on board with the plan. Governor Rick Snyder has said it’s ”not the appropriate time” to discuss a plan to change the electoral college, saying he’d prefer a bipartisan conversation held closer to a census.

Yes, well. Governor Snyder also said he wouldn't ram through a right-to-work bill in Michigan too, and after voters rejected right-to-work laws in that state, Snyder signed one into law anyway. I wouldn't take his concern over timing very seriously at all.

This isn't over. They're just operating in the shadows right now.

Undaunted by rejection of their first effort to hijack 2016, Pennsylvania Republicans soldier on with a new scheme for awarding unearned electoral votes to Republican candidates and weakening their state's influence on Federal elections.

Will Bunch:

So comes now Pileggi with Plan B. The district scheme is out; instead, electoral votes would be awarded proportionally, guaranteeing the loser would pick up some free tallies that he or she would not have received under the systems used by every other state. In 2012, loser Romney would have received 8 of the 20 electoral votes. Last year, that would not have made a difference. In 2016, in a closer race....who knows?

Last night, a Democratic state lawmaker, Rep. Mike Sturia, told the website Think Progress that Pileggi, his legislative allies and Gov. Corbett could all but click their heels and make this thing the law of the land in just four days:

They could have it out of the House in three days and it could go over to the Senate and they could have it out of there in three days and it could go to the governor’s office and he could sign it. . . . The Senate can suspend the rules and have it passed in less than 24 hours. [The House] has to have a 2/3s majority to suspend the rules so usually we can at least make them do the three days.

Call me a crazy optimist, but I'm betting in the end this won't happen. I sure hope it doesn't. For one thing, Pennsylvania has way too many problems -- falling bridges and failing schools come to mind -- to waste valable hours on this election-stealing nonsense. In the bigger picture -- and I doubt this could happen -- I would love to see an amendment to ensure that federal elections are governed by one federal set of rules. That's just common sense -- imagine the fan outcry if the NFL used a different rulebook for games played in Louisiana than it did for contests in Maryland. If pro football can do it, why can't America.

As Susie has noted, Pileggi is a corrupt, greedy state politician who wants desperately to lock in Pennsylvania as a Republican stronghold. Even though his current plan is a watered-down version of Plan A, it still has the potential to actually negate the popular vote for president in favor of one that unreasonably grants one side or the other unearned electoral votes.

Enough of this. Clearly they can't win on their ideas, but that doesn't mean they should steal the election either.

Ed explains Preibus' strategy with regard to the electoral college

If you're just tuning into this, watch Ed explain Republicans' strategy for stealing the 2016 election. My hair is on fire --in advance of my head exploding. Preibus' "in your face" cynicism and thuggery is mind-bending.

I wanted to find a way to change the outcome, so I've been hunting down information on the different states to see how these efforts can be countered. Here's what I have so far.

• Virginia: Virginia has made the first move to change how their electors are allocated. Following their efforts to redistrict state Senate districts, a Senate subcommittee moved on Wednesday to make the change. Go to Credo Action and sign their petition which will remind Governor Ultrasound McDonnell that he shouldn't sign any bill that reaches his desk into law if he has aspirations beyond the end of his gubernatorial term. Virginia is also a state covered by the Voting Rights Act, which should mean a serious investigation of Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in the state, who tend to be clustered in the areas. If this becomes law, minority voters will be deemed irrelevant.

There is some cause to hope, however. Republican State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel opposes the plan. She abstained from the subcommittee vote and has said she would "likely" oppose it in committee or on the floor. I hope she means it, because that would break the tie in the Senate and cause the measure to fail.

Continue reading »

Here we go! After their stealth move to redistrict Virginia's Senate districts, Republicans are moving the next piece into place. News-Leader reports:

A Republican-backed bill that would end Virginia’s winner-takes-all method of apportioning its 13 electoral votes in presidential elections cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday.

A Senate Privileges and Elections subcommittee recommended Sen. Bill Carrico’s bill on a 3-3 party line vote Wednesday, advancing it to consideration by the GOP-dominated full committee next week. Republicans control the Senate and House in Virginia, and Gov. Bob McDonnell is a Republican.

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.

So Virginia thinks that the solution is basing electoral votes on acreage rather than people? Seriously, Carrico is arguing that because the DC suburbs have more people who cast more votes, they should reapportion electoral votes by district. As Working America said, this would be the "heads I win, tails you lose" strategy.

Here's the text of the bill:

Electoral College. Provides that the Commonwealth's electoral votes shall be allocated by congressional district. Receipt by a slate of presidential electors of the highest number of votes in a congressional district constitutes the election of the congressional district elector of that slate. Receipt by a slate of electors of the highest number of votes in a majority of congressional districts constitutes the election of the two at-large electors of that slate. In the event no slate receives the highest number of votes in a majority of districts, receipt by a slate of the highest number of votes statewide shall constitute election of the two at-large electors of that slate.

The only comfort in all of this is that Virginia is subject to review under the Voting Rights Act, which means this scheme (and their stealth redistricting scheme) may not pass muster. But I wouldn't count on that, particularly with the Voting Rights Act in front of the US Supreme Court this year.

I think we'd better figure out how to get rid of the electoral college altogether --and fast.

On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state. Under their bill, the winner of Pennsylvania as a whole will receive only 2 of the state’s 20 electoral votes, while “[e]ach of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district.”

Pennsylvania is a blue state that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every single presidential race for the last two decades, so implementing the GOP election-rigging plan in Pennsylvania would make it much harder for a Democrat to be elected to the White House. Moreover, because of gerrymandering, it is overwhelmingly likely that the Republican candidate will win a majority of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes even if the Democrat wins the state by a very comfortable margin. Despite the fact that President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points last November, Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. Accordingly, Obama would have likely won only 7 of the state’s 20 electoral votes if the GOP vote rigging plan had been in effect last year.

ThinkProgress notes that the bill has fewer sponsors this time than last, which might indicate that they're not going to prioritize it. I think it's just a case of political cover. The less fingerprints on the effort to subvert the will of the people, the better.

More folks are starting to get shrill. Good. The more voices the better. Republicans should not be allowed to steal what they cannot win.

Back in 2011, Pennsylvania state legislators toyed with the idea of changing their electoral college vote system so that they would align with already-gerrymandered Congressional districts. Ultimately they didn't go with that idea, but that doesn't mean it died.

Shortly after the November election, that idea was floated again. Stung by the "shocking" outcome of the 2012 general election, Senate Majority Leader Domenic Pileggi proposed changing the electoral college votes from winner-take-all to apportionment by Congressional districts.

But it isn't just Pennsylvania. It's Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, too. Via fairvote.org:

A little number-crunching demonstrates why. If Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama's advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat.

The power of elector-allocation rule changes goes further. Taken to an extreme, these Republican-run states have the ability to lock Democrats out of a chance of victory in 2016 absent the Democratic nominee winning a national landslide of some 12 million votes. In short, the Republicans could win the 2016 election in by state law changes made in 2013.

These states could actually do it. They all have Republican majorities in their statehouses, and they all have gerrymandered districts. Now that states have begun their legislative calendars, there is absolutely nothing to stop them from taking this kind of action.

This is a Red Alert Moment. Reince Priebus has blessed the plan. Via The Nation:

The RNC chair is encouraging Republican governors and legislators—who, thanks to the “Republican wave” election of 2010, still control many battleground states that backed Obama and the Democrats in 2012—to game the system.

“I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue [Democratic in presidential politics] that are fully controlled red [in the statehouse] ought to be considering,” Priebus says with regard to the schemes for distributing electoral votes by district rather than the traditional awarding of the votes of each state (except Nebraska and Maine, which have historically used narrowly defined district plans) to the winner.

Voter ID will seem like child's play next to this. As it is, it would take a minimum 7 percent margin for a Democrat to win a House seat in any of these gerrymandered districts. If they are able to change the apportionment of electoral college votes to lock them in now, there really won't be a whole lot of reason to even hold elections in 2016. The coup will have been complete in 2013.

Republicans operate on the premise that what they can't win outright, they're happy to steal. This is a Red Alert moment for anyone who actually thinks we should have free, fair elections where everyone's vote counts. We need to counter this with a demand to abolish the electoral college altogether, or at the very least, make twice as much noise as the wingers did over health care reform.

Not that there aren't some good arguments for getting rid of the electoral college, but Dominic Pileggi's been in Pennsylvania politics a long time, and he didn't express similar concerns after George W. Bush was reelected. I assume he wants to change the rules because it makes it easier for Republicans to gain the system. Which is the point, I guess:

A Pennsylvania lawmaker’s plan to divvy up electoral votes based on a presidential candidate’s public support may be just the first of many state legislative moves to alter the way the nation chooses a leader.

State Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, a Republican from Chester, wants to replace the winner-take-all system, which gave President Barack Obama Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, with one that divides them to reflect the proportion of public support for each candidate. His method would have given 12 votes to Obama and eight to Republican Mitt Romney this year.

“Anyone who voted for Governor Romney, and many Pennsylvanians did, does not have any reflection of that vote in the electoral college vote,” Pileggi said. “This is a proposal that is not party specific or partisan in any way, but just an attempt to have the popular vote reflected in the electoral college vote.”

Pileggi’s proposal, which he asked senators in a memo to cosponsor, may be the first of a spate presented to lawmakers nationwide. Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University in Columbus and associate director of its Election Law @ Moritz center said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Republicans and Democrats seeking ways to “game the system” ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

If all states had used Pileggi’s method, the final outcome Nov. 6 wouldn’t have changed, though it would’ve narrowed Obama’s margin of victory, according a preliminary legislative analysis of the proposal. The president would’ve won 281 electoral votes to Romney’s 256. Obama won, 332 to 206.

Next year, at least 36 states will have one-party control of legislatures and governor’s offices, including Pennsylvania, according to MultiStates Associates Inc., a lobbying firm in Alexandria, Virginia.

“It’s never too early for partisan gamesmanship among partisan politicians,” Tokaji said.

Judson Phillips wrote one of his crazy posts for World Net Daily, that bastion of solid unbiased reporting, suggesting that electors should refuse to show up to the electoral college because without a quorum, the decision would move to the House of Representatives. Yes, Mr. Phillips is one of the malevolent voices of the right who just cannot deal with the fact that the nation re-elected President Obama by the highest popular vote margins any Democrat has received since Lyndon Johnson. It's out of his intellectual and emotional reach, evidently. Here's part of what he wrote:

According to the 12th Amendment, for the Electoral College to be able to select the president, it must have a quorum of two-thirds of the states voting. If enough states refuse to participate, the Electoral College will not have a quorum. If the Electoral College does not have a quorum or otherwise cannot vote or decide, then the responsibility for selecting the president and vice president devolves to the Congress.

The House of Representatives selects the president and the Senate selects the vice president.

Since the Republicans hold a majority in the House, presumably they would vote for Mitt Romney, and the Democrats in the Senate would vote for Joe Biden for vice president.

Can this work?

Sure it can.

One small problem. Phillips incorrectly reads the 12th amendment, as Jason Easley at Politicususa explains:

Actually, it can’t. Phillips misread the 12th Amendment. The quorum rule only applies to the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College. World Net Daily updated the Philips post with the correct information. People wrote it, and then everyone went about their Thanksgiving business under the assumption that this crazy, stupid, and incorrect reading of the 12 Amendment was over and done with.

This has not stopped the idea from finding a life in the viral right-wing email atmosphere, where visions of death panels and Kenyan births are regular inbox denizens. Now those email strands have inspired an Idaho lawmaker to cling to this as the solution to their devastating election loss. The Idaho Statesman reports:

A state senator from north-central Idaho is touting a scheme that’s been circulating on tea party blogs, calling for states that supported Mitt Romney to refuse to participate in the Electoral College in a move backers believe would change the election result.

Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, sent an article out on Twitter headed, “A ‘last chance’ to have Mitt Romney as President in January (it’s still not too late).”

She is debunked in a pretty blunt way by constitutional scholar David Adler, who explains that in the electoral college, one need only have 270 votes. No quorum is required. Just 270 electors voting for one candidate. You think Barack Obama is worried about this crazy challenge?

This has left Nuxoll bereft.

She said, “I think it is very, very sad that we elected our current president, because he is definitely not following (the) Constitution. He is depriving us of our freedoms by all the agencies, and so … what I’m thinking is the states are going to have to stand up for our individual rights and for our collective rights.”

Nuxoll won a second Senate term on Nov. 6 with 64 percent of the vote in Idaho’s new legislative District 7, defeating independent Jon Cantamessa.

Oh, tea party. We have to put up with your loony Congresscritters so just live with our elected President, ok?

Judson Phillips has evidently accepted reality on this, but he's been desperately casting about for someone to blame for the November 6th rejection of all he holds dear. Today, he decided to aim at young voters, which is awesome for ensuring the tea party's obsolescence. He wrote a rant and posted it on Tea Party Nation today blaming them for everything from student loans to Jimmy Carter. I'm sure he would have blamed them for climate change if he believed in climate change. Here's a taste:

If you are under thirty now, you could be in your seventies and still paying for us baby boomers.

This is what you got by reelecting Barack Obama.

There is an old saying, “you get the government you deserve.”

In this case, that saying has never been truer.

I loved the first comment.

Why don't we get into solutions instead of negativity.

Oh, brave commenter, you're so right. Of course, the problem is that the solutions are things you just cannot abide, like a government by, for, and of the people.

By the way, there's a reason Tea Party Nation is one of the few tea party groups to snag the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They're extreme and extremely hateful. They also seem to have a problem with reality-based living.

*edited to clarify remarks about vote margins

Using NBC Political Director Chuck Todd's latest map of "safe" states (above) for each candidate showing only seven swing states remaining... Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Virginia... I stayed up late last night compiling this simple "Victory Matrix", a brief table showing the swing states each candidate needs to reach the minimum 270 Electoral Votes necessary to win.

Assuming a starting point of 243 bankable EV's for Obama and 206 EV's for Romney, here are the fewest swing states each candidate needs to reach the 270 vote threshold:

As you can see, if President Obama wins Florida, it's game over for Romney. The President can lose every other swing state and still break 270. So Florida is a "must win" for Romney.

Obama also has many more paths to victory. If he loses Florida, he still has EIGHT more paths to victory. In fact, he can lose both Florida AND Ohio and still has FOUR paths to victory. There is no absolute "must win" state for President Obama.

Governor Romney on the other hand has a much steeper hill to climb, with far fewer paths to victory with (as noted) Florida being a "must win" for him or it is all over. Mitt has just five paths to victory (sans an upset in a "safely blue" state not listed here), all of which require winning at least four swing states, with "Iowa" and NH being the states he least needs to still win. So if President Obama is the first to win four, likewise the race should technically be over.

Three of Romney's five paths require winning Ohio, while four require winning Virgina. So if he loses one, he MUST win the other to stay alive. Based on the latest polls, Romney has a much better chance of winning Virgina than Ohio (though he trails in both), so while everyone else will be watching Ohio, I will be watching Virgina. Romney has but one path to victory if he loses Virgina, so if Obama wins that, I predict the race to be over rather early.

You can use this table like a scorecard. Let's just hope the race isn't close enough to steal, with no surprises, and we're all in bed by a decent hour.

Oddly enough, this isn't one of the pieces of legislation pushed by our friendly corporate interests at ALEC - in fact, they're on the record opposing elections by popular vote. But it's not outside the realm of possibility that they dreamed up this twisted variation on what they oppose, since they do get control of redistricting. This would be a serious problem for Democrats:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Gov. Tom Corbett and state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi are proposing that the state divide up its Electoral College votes according to which candidates carried each Congressional district, plus two votes for the statewide winner. The system is used by Maine — which, despite the system, has never actually split its four electoral votes — and by Nebraska, which gave one of its five votes to Barack Obama in 2008.

Pennsylvania, however, will have 20 electoral votes in the 2012 election. What’s more, the measure would give even greater meaning to the state’s redistricting for the House of Representatives, giving it a powerful effect over the presidency in addition to the House.

Pennsylvania has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, and voted for Barack Obama by 55%-44% in 2008. Indeed, over the past 50 years it has only voted Republican in presidential landslides for the GOP: 1972, 1980, 1984, and finally 1988. While the results have sometimes been narrow for the Dems, it is a state that can be expected to vote Democratic for president in the context of a close national campaign, such as its votes for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

Had this proposed system been in place in 2008, when Obama won the state by a ten-point margin, he in fact would have only taken 11 out of the state’s 21 electoral votes at the time — due to a combination of past Republican-led redistricting efforts to maximize their district strength, and Obama’s votes being especially concentrated within urban areas.

As can be expected, the Post-Gazette reports that Democrats are attacking the proposal as a partisan power-grab, while Republicans are standing by it as a reform that would focus attention on districts throughout the state:

Blasting the idea as “a disturbing effort to put their self interests and party interests ahead of the people,” Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, said the plan would dangerously link the presidential vote to redistricting. In a written statement, Mr. Costa asked: “Will we now be looking at state gerrymandering that serves a larger, national agenda?”

Mr. Pileggi and others disagreed, saying congressional districts that are more competitive would receive more attention and would not be overshadowed when the state leans one way or another politically.

Let me tell you a little bit about state Sen. Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi: He's an important piece of the famously corrupt Republican machine in suburban Delaware County, part of their TV-friendly "new breed". He also served as mayor of Chester -- one of the poorest cities in America, a town that's been abused and sucked dry by the Republican powers that be for a very long time, especially its school district. He's not much better to Philadelphia, either. He says that before they come to him for money, Philadelphia should fix patronage in city government.

You'd have to know Delaware County to know how funny that is. One relevant example: Pileggi collected $35,000 as an assistant county solicitor to pad his $60,000 salary as a state senator. Funny, how that works.

This is just the long way of saying that if Dominic Pileggi's for it, I'm against it.