Two weeks ago, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus called upon “states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” to consider a Republican plan to rig future presidential races. Under the GOP plan, these blue states would stop awarding electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, and instead would award them one-by-one to the winner of each congressional district. Because these districts are highly gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the election-rigging plan ensures that Republicans will win the overwhelming majority of the electoral votes in these blue states regardless of how the people of those states cast their votes.

Six states potentially fit Priebus’ description of a blue state that is currently controlled by Republicans — Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. To date, senior Republicans in four of these states have either voted down the plan or indicated that it will not be taken up in the first place, and the governor of a fifth state has expressed concerns about the plan:

• Florida: Florida is the least blue of the six states where the GOP plan could be enacted, so it is unsurprising that top Florida Republicans appear cold to the plan. Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) compared the plan to rigging a football game, and state Senate President Don Gaetz (R) supports abolishing the Electoral College altogether.
• Virginia: Yesterday, a Virginia state senate committee voted to kill the election-rigging plan by an overwhelming 11-4 vote. Four Republicans opposed rigging the Electoral College.
• Ohio: Many of the most senior Republicans in Ohio, including Gov. John Kasich, state Senate President Keith Faber and House Speaker William G. Batchelder all said this week that they will not pursue the election-rigging plan, and Batchelder added that he “is not supportive of such a move.”
• Michigan: In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) said that he is “very skeptical” of the election-rigging plan and would oppose taking it up at least until right before the next redistricting.
• Wisconsin: The election-rigging plan is decidedly not dead in Wisconsin, but Gov. Scott Walker (R) said earlier this week that he has “real concern” that it could diminish the relevance of Wisconsin in presidential races.

So the Republican Plan is officially dead in one state and lacks the support of essential lawmakers in three states. Of the two states where it is decidedly still alive — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the top Republican in one of those states says he has concerns about the plan. Nevertheless, supporters of democracy should not break out the champagne yet because there are three reasons to be frightened that the plan could reemerge.

The first is that the plan is still alive and well in Pennsylvania, which has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every single election for more than two decades. Both Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) support rigging the Electoral College.
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The prospects of a proposal to rig Michigan’s electoral votes in favor of Republicans took a nosedive on Tuesday as Gov. Rick Snyder (R) came out against the plan this year.

Snyder had previously been considering the plan to shift Michigan’s presidential system from a winner-take-all system to divvying electoral votes by congressional district.

However, in an interview with Bloomberg, Snyder backed off, saying he was “very skeptical” of the idea, noting it would “change the playing field so it’s an unfair advantage.” He finished by saying, “I don’t think this is the appropriate time to look at it.”

HUNT: There is a move in your state by some Republican legislators to change the presidential electoral system from a winner-take-all to doing it by congressional districts. If that happened last November, Barack Obama–who carried this state by a huge margin, almost double-digits–would have won only 4 of the 14 congressional districts. It would tilt the tables tremendously in the Republicans’ favor. You have said you wanted to look at it, let’s see what it is. Gov. McDonnell of Virginia, Haley Barbour and others have said it’s a bad idea. Are you still neutral or are you becoming convinced it’s a bad idea?

SNYDER: I’m very skeptical of the idea and the timeframe that would be done, because I really view it as a question of you don’t want to change the playing field so it’s an unfair advantage to someone. A lot of ways, we want to make sure we’re reflecting the vote of the people, and this could challenge that. So in many respects, the right time to do it is if people are looking as, we should do it before census is taken and before redistricting takes place and it should be a bipartisan effort.

HUNT: So if you do it, you do it much later.

SNYDER: Yeah. I don’t think this is the appropriate time to look at it.

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State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R) also cast doubt on the proposal Tuesday, saying of the current system, “I don’t know that it’s broken, so I don’t know that I want to fix it.” The state’s House Speaker, Jase Bolger (R), supports the plan.

This is potentially a major victory for opponents of the electoral rigging plan. In addition to holding the governorship, Republicans currently enjoy an 8-seat majority in the State House and a 15-seat majority in the State Senate.

ProgressVirginia reported Tuesday afternoon that the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee killed Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s electoral college-rigging bill, despite an offer by Carrico to amend the bill to award electors in proportion to the state’s popular vote. The vote was 11-4 against the bill, although it will not be official until the close of the committee meeting.

The bill, as written, would have awarded 11 of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to the winner of each of the state’s 11 heavily gerrymandered Congressional Districts. The remaining two electors would have been awarded to whoever won the majority of Congressional Districts. Under this scheme, Mitt Romney would have received 9 Virginia electors to Obama’s 4, even though Barack Obama won the state by four points.

A Republican plan to rig the next presidential race by changing the way electoral votes are allocated in several key blue states appears to be dead in Ohio — although it could still advance in other Republican-controlled states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Several of the senior-most Republican officials in Ohio told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that they do not intend to push the GOP election-rigging plan:

Spokesmen for Gov. John Kasich, State Senate President Keith Faber and House Speaker William G. Batchelder told The Plain Dealer this week that they are not pursuing plans to award electoral votes proportionally by congressional district.

Batchelder went a step further, saying through his communications director that he “is not supportive of such a move.” And Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, the state’s chief elections administrator, emphasized that he does not favor the plan either, despite Democratic suspicions based on reported comments that he said were taken out of context.

“Nobody in Ohio is advocating this,” Husted said in a telephone interview.

Although the death of this election-rigging plan in Ohio is an important victory for the principle that Americans choose their own leaders — and do not have them chosen for them by partisans in state capitols — there is still very real danger Republicans could push this plan in other states. Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger (R) indicated he is open to the election-rigging plan late last week, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) both support rigging the Electoral College.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is tempering his previous support for a proposed plan to rig the Electoral College in favor of Republicans, saying that he has “real concern” about the idea.

The proposal would entail shifting the state’s electoral votes from a winner-takes-all system, as 48 states use, to a per-congressional district apportionment. The result would be that a blue state like Wisconsin, which gave its 10 electoral votes to President Obama in 2012, would instead split its votes evenly between both candidates.

Though Walker had previously said the idea was “interesting” and “plausible”, Walker seemingly backed off those comments in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His major concern was that the shift would make Wisconsin far less relevant in future presidential campaigns.

“You concede it would have a dramatic impact on the targeting of the state?” Walker was asked.

“Right. Exactly right … That’s why I qualified (my earlier statements) … I just said I hadn’t ruled it out. I’m not embracing it,” said Walker.

“The most important thing to me long-term as governor on that is what makes your voters be in play,” said Walker, voicing the concern that ending “winner-take all” would make the state “irrelevant” in presidential campaigns.

“You would agree it would have that effect?” he was asked.

“Yeah. I think that’s a real concern,” he said.

Even if Walker ultimately backs off the electoral rigging plan, another prominent Wisconsin Republican, RNC Chair Reince Priebus, still supports it.

As the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee prepares to take up a bill to rig bill the state’s electoral college vote, Democrats and even Republicans are distancing themselves from the effort, calling it “a bad idea,” “skewing,” and a “partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters.” A ThinkProgress analysis of Virginia voter demographics reveals another major flaw with the proposal: it would significantly dilute the influence of minority voters.

The 2012 Virginia Congressional maps, authored by Delegate Robert Bell (R) based on the 2010 U.S. Census, divided the state’s estimated 8,001,024 people into 11 Congressional districts. Though the state population is more than 20 percent African American — and more than 31 percent non-white — just one Congressional district contains a majority of non-white voters (the Third District, which is majority African American). Though white non-Hispanic Virginians makeup just 68.6 percent of the population, they comprise at least 58 percent of the population in all of the other 10 districts.

While many of the electoral college-rigging schemes being pushed by Republicans nationally would still allocate two electors based on the popular winner in the state — the Virginia plan would not even do that. State Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s Senate Bill 723 would allocate 11 electors based on the popular winner in each of the House districts and two to whichever candidate won the majority of those gerrymandered House districts.

So, with more than one-fifth of the population, African American Virginians would go from having about 20 percent of the say to just controlling one-thirteenth of the state’s electoral votes under the Carrico plan. And racial minority voters overall would go from having about 31 percent of the say, to also controlling just 7.7 percent of the state’s electors.

And while African American voters would of course have some say in districts where they do not make up a majority, more than a quarter of them them are packed into the 3rd district, meaning the remaining 73 percent would be in districts where they comprised, on average, just about 16 percent of the population. This would be a significant retrogression of influence for minority voters. Given Virginia’s history of racial discrimination and the fact that much of the state remains a Voting Rights Act covered jurisdiction, this maneuver might well be not just anti-democratic, but also illegal.

Late last week, democracy scored two important victories over a Republican plan to rig future presidential elections by changing the way electoral votes are counted in several key blue states. Two Virginia Republican state senators spoke out against the plan, effectively killing it. And Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) attacked the election-rigging scheme as trying to “change the rules of the game.”

In Michigan, however, which is the bluest of the six blue states where the election-rigging plan has been discussed, state House Speaker Jase Bolger (R) appears quite open to rigging his state’s electoral college votes to benefit Republicans:

Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger (R) said on Friday that he’s open to pursuing the strategy in his state. According to Gongwer (subscription required), Bolger believes a bill by state Rep. Pete Lund (R) — which has yet to be introduced — is worthy of strong consideration.

“I hear that more and more from our citizens in various parts of the state of Michigan that they don’t feel like their vote for president counts because another area of the state may dominate that or could sway their vote,” Bolger told Gongwer. “They feel closer to voting for their congressman or their congresswoman and if that vote coincided with their vote for president they would feel better about that.”

In other words, Republican voters in Michigan are upset that Democrats win elections simply because there are more of them. And Bolger wants to fix that by giving the few Republicans more votes than the majority.

Republicans in several blue states are currently considering a plan to rig the next presidential election by changing the way electoral votes are allocated to candidates. Under the Republican Plan, key blue states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would assign electoral votes one-each to the winner of the state’s heavily gerrymandered congressional districts. If this plan had been in effect in Michigan last year, Mitt Romney would have won 9 of the state’s 16 electoral votes, despite losing the state as a whole by nearly 10 points.

Although the Republican Plan is picking up steam among GOP lawmakers right now, several of them backed the plan during the 2012 election cycle in an attempt to rig that race for Mitt Romney. According to Michigan Rep. Pete Lund (R), however, Republicans in Michigan decided not to back the plan largely because they misjudged Romney’s chances of winning Michigan:

Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, confirmed this week he plans to reintroduce legislation that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according to congressional district results. The remaining two would go to the candidate winning the statewide majority.

“I believe it’s more representative of the people — closer to the actual vote,” said Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012. “It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him.”

So Republicans were unwilling to back Lund’s plan when they thought it would benefit Democrats. Now that it’s clear that the plan rigs the election for Republicans, however, it is suddenly experiencing a renaissance.

Nearly a decade before the GOP responded to President Obama’s re-election by proposing to rig the Electoral College in states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, Republicans vehemently opposed the plan and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting its implementation.

In 2004, when Colorado was still a red state and then-President Bush was locked in a tight race with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the state had a ballot initiative that would have shifted its allocation of electoral votes from winner-take-all to proportional. Under the proposal, for example, even if Bush had won 60 percent of the vote, he still would only get 5 of the state’s 9 electoral votes instead of all 9.

However, the proposed Electoral College rig ended up getting trounced for one reason: Republicans strongly opposed the idea.

The push against Amendment 36, which failed by a 2-to-1 margin, was led by Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who lambasted the idea as a “transparently partisan movement”. Owens detailed his opposition in a USA Today op-ed:

There’s a transparently partisan movement afoot in Colorado to distribute our Electoral College votes proportionately. The goal? To give John Kerry a four-vote Electoral College boost, putting him ahead of President Bush in a close election.

But that in and of itself is not the reason proposed Amendment 36 on the Nov. 2 ballot is bad for Colorado. The fact is that if Amendment 36 passed, it would forever make it easy for presidential candidates to ignore Colorado, since our state would be an Electoral College “lone ranger” among states.[...]

Here’s why: Colorado is a state with a slight Republican majority, but which, nevertheless, has a longstanding tradition of electing Democrats to statewide and national office. If Colorado split its electoral votes, leaving just one or two electoral votes in play, future presidential candidates — and presidents — would ignore Colorado and its interests in favor of states with more electoral clout. They would skip over us and move on to more fertile ground.

If that sounds like the same argument Democrats and anyone opposed to GOP’s electoral rigging efforts are currently making, that’s because it is.

Owens was joined by all his fellow state GOP officials in opposing the plan. Republican consultant Katy Atkinson, who organized the anti-36 effort under the umbrella group “Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea”, noted that it would undermine the state’s clout. “[If Amendment 36 passes], Colorado will effectively have 1/3 of the power of Alaska, Delaware or Wyoming,” Atkinson wrote. State newspapers roundly criticized the initiative; the Pueblo Chieftain even called the proposed electoral rig a “quest for pure, raw political power by the left.”

National conservatives also criticized the idea. George Will wrote a scathing article in Newsweek, calling it a “pernicious proposal”. Major GOP funders also rallied against the referendum; Sheldon Adelson alone contributed $100,000 against Amendment 36.

In 2004, Republicans fervently opposed manipulating the Electoral College when the Democratic candidate stood to benefit. A decade later, after Obama won his second term and pundits discuss a long-term electoral realignment, Republicans are abandoning that principled stand in an attempt to rig future presidential elections.

Virginia state Sen. Ralph Smith (R) said today that a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election by changing the way electoral votes are counted is a “bad idea” and that he would oppose it. Smith joins state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-VA), who told ThinkProgress earlier this week that “I am generally not in favor right now of the bill and it’s very unlikely that I will vote for it in full committee or the Senate floor.” As the Virginia Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, Smith and Vogel’s opposition is likely sufficient to kill this election-rigging scheme in this state.

[HT: Benjy Sarlin]