Yesterday for the Raging Chicken, I wrote about State Senator Dominic Pileggi’s proposals to reform the state’s Electoral College in 2011 and December 2012. Prior to the Voter ID battle, Governor Corbett and Senator Pileggi thought that changing the way Pennsylvania distributes its electoral votes would benefit Mitt Romney. If the plan to distribute votes based on gerrymandered Congressional districts, Obama would have received 12 out of 20 electoral votes, despite winning the statewide race by 4 points. Since Voter ID, voter intimidation and other voting suppression tactics failed to deliver Mitt Romney the election, Republicans in state houses around the country are beginning to look at rigging the electoral vote to secure 2016. Over the weekend, ThinkProgress explained that Mitt Romney would have won the election if Republican swing states used “Corbett’s election-rigging plan.” The article also explained that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed the reforms and told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.”
On January 14th, State Representative Robert Godshall – from Montgomery County – introduced vote rigging House Bill 94. He is the prime sponsor and other Republicans that co-sponsored the bill include: Seth Grove, Rob Kauffman, Adam Harris, Steve Barrar, Joe Emrick and Dan Moul. The bill was introduced to the Committee on State Government and would like to amend Section 1501 of the 1937 Pennsylvania Election Code. Section 1501 is the section that explains how electoral votes are distributed. The two amendments House Republicans are proposing state:
(1) Two of the presidential electors shall be elected at large to represent the entire Commonwealth and shall cast their ballots for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates with the greatest number of votes Statewide.
(2) Each of the remaining presidential electors shall be elected in the presidential elector’s congressional district and shall cast a ballot for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates with the greatest number of votes in the congressional district.
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Sean Kitchen is an Assistant Editor and Social Media Organizer for Raging Chicken Press. He is student at Kutztown University
