Constant Vigiliance, He Shouted

Don't look now, but swing state Republicans are trying to rig the 2016 electoral college again, this time in Pennsylvania, and this time there may not be anything Democrats can do to stop it.

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.

Oh, it gets worse.

The 13 co-sponsors on Pileggi’s bill amount to exactly half of the 26 votes he needs to pass the bill through the state senate. According to state Rep. Mike Sturla (D-PA), now that Pileggi has introduced his election-rigging plan, Republicans could conceivably ram it through both houses of the state legislature and have it on Corbett’s desk in just four days.

In other words, this could end up law within a week:

 The nominee for the Office of President of the United States who wins the plurality of the Statewide popular vote shall be awarded two presidential electors.

The remaining presidential electors shall be divided among nominees for President of the United States by multiplying the number of remaining presidential electors by the percentage of the Statewide popular vote received by a nominee for President of the United States and rounding up to the nearest whole number, subject to the following:

If the total number of presidential electors allocated to all candidates is greater than the number of available electors, the number of presidential electors allocated to the nominee with the smallest percentage of the Statewide popular vote shall be reduced by one.

In other words, the PA plan is to split the state by popular vote percentage, with the winner getting two additional electoral votes, rather than the state being winner take all.  It neatly rigs the state for Republicans, and turns PA into a permanent battleground state.

Now, if every single state did this, that would be one thing, but it's only purple states where Obama won in 2012 that are thinking about this.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan Florida, and Wisconsin could do this without any interference from Dems, too, all but assuring Republicans win in 2016.

Here we go again.