Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R) plan to rig the Electoral College for the GOP by guaranteeing that as many as a dozen of his state’s electoral votes go to the Republican candidate even if the state as a whole votes for Obama. Under Corbett’s plan, each of the state’s 18 congressional districts — which are being gerrymandered to overwhelmingly favor Republicans — would choose how to allocate a single electoral vote rather than having all of the state’s votes go to the winner of the state.
Corbett’s plan may have hit a snag, however. Turns out, GOP members of Congress care more about keeping their own jobs than they do about electing a president who will eliminate Medicare:
[T]o several Republicans in marginal districts, the plan has a catch: they’re worried that Democrats will move dollars and ground troops from solid blue districts to battlegrounds in pursuit of electoral votes — and in the process, knock off the Republicans currently in the seats.
Suburban Philadelphia Reps. Jim Gerlach, Pat Meehan and Mike Fitzpatrick have the most at stake, since all represent districts Democrats won in the last two presidential elections. They and the rest of the Republicans in the delegation are joining with National Republican Congressional Committee officials to respond and mobilize against the change.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of today’s GOP that the only reason its members can find to oppose an election rigging scheme is that they are too concerned about looking out for their own hides. Yet, as Kevin Drum warns, “we live in the era of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Fox News. There’s really no one left who might object to this merely out of a decent respect for institutional integrity and fairmindedness.”
Update:
Your humble Justice Editor discussed the Pennsylvania vote rigging scheme last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Watch: