The Latest Election-Rigging Attempt by the GOP

From Think Progress: 

Last winter, shortly after President Obama won his second term in office, many Republicans rallied behind a pair of election-rigging plans designed to make it virtually impossible for a Democrat to win White House again. Though the two plans differ in important ways, the crux of both plans is to rig the Electoral College by requiring blue states to award a significant portion of their electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates — all while ensuring that red states will award 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican as well. Though these election-rigging plans appeared dead after a wave of Republican officials came out against them, one of them has just returned to life in California.

On November 22, a man named Hal Nickle filed a proposed ballot initiative in California which would change the way that state allocates electoral votes to ensure that a large chunk of California’s 55 electors go to the GOP, even though Californians consistently prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans. Rather than allocating all of California’s electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, as nearly all states currently award their votes, the election-rigging initiative would allocate the states votes proportionally according to the percentage of votes won by each candidate. Thus, if this plan had been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 37.12 percent of California’s electors — adding 20 to his overall total.

The trick behind this proposal is that if would only change the law in California, while leaving red states free to award all of their electors to the Republican...

Counter: perhaps Democrats should try this in Texas, Louisiana, and other reliably red states. it would be interesting to see the GOP try to wiggle their way around saying it is okay to do this in blue states but not red states (because you know they would try to rationalize that "logic").

GOP Steps Back From Rigging The System, For Now

Gov. Snyder (R-MI) on Electoral Rigging

 

I'm still not sure where he is on this issue given this clip. He's saying not now, maybe later. Perhaps he should have been asked a follow-up question or two.

Republicans in six state legislatures (Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin) are considering similar schemes of allocating their electoral votes, but are seeing considerable push-back. Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) seems to be opposed to it, as are a few GOP members of the state's tightly split Senate (20 Democrats and 20 Republicans).

Republicans' Electoral College Scheme

Virginia Republicans Rigging the Electoral College

From The American Prospect:

...In addition to disenfranchising voters in dense areas, this would end the principle of “one person, one vote.” If Ohio operated under this scheme, for example, Obama would have received just 22 percent of the electoral votes, despite winning 52 percent of the popular vote in the state.

For this reason, I didn’t expect Republicans to go forward with the plan—the risk of blowback is just too high. My skepticism, however, was misplaced. In Virginia, a local news station reports that just this afternoon, a state Senate subcommittee recommended a bill end Virginia’s winner-take-all system and apportion its 13 electoral votes by congressional district.

Unlike similar proposals in Pennsylvania and Michigan, this one wouldn’t award the remaining electoral votes to the winner (Virginia has 11 districts). Rather, the winner of the most congressional districts would get the final two votes. If this were in effect last year, Obama would have gotten just 4 of the state’s votes, despite winning 51 percent of its voters.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Charles W. “Bill” Carrico, says the change is necessary because Virginia’s urbanized areas can outvote rural regions, weakening their political strength. In other words, Carrico thinks winning land is more important than winning people when it comes to presidential elections.

Clearly the GOP strategy is: If you can't get them on your side, make it so they don't matter.

GOP Rigging The System For 2016