Thursday, January 17, 2013

Gerrymandering The Presidential Election

Pennsylvania Republicans are giving it a try:
Pennsylvania Republicans are going ahead with their cute little plan to steal a bunch of electoral votes in 2016 by splitting the state’s tally along House district lines.
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.
I would expect Republicans in states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to try this shit.  Obama won the electoral vote with a 51-47 margin.  However, Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives.  Can you imagine how much of a mess it would have been if Romney still managed to win the Electoral College because of something like this?

No comments:

Post a Comment