Pennsylvania looks to alter electoral vote system

Let's say the next election for Pennsylvania State Senate is in 2 years, they will have already passed this stupid law by then.

Then it will be up to the new elected Dems to undo this crap........And what if they can't find any Dems to run against these bozos?!?!?!

I didn't vote for any Republicans in the last election yet there they are! Contrary to the PA Constitution my congressional district has been gerrymandered to ridiculous proportions. How can we get past that nonsense?

I'd say it'd be safe to think that in about 10-12 years, the growth of non-white voting population will have overtaken the white male population to the extent that they can re-gerrymander the districts if the new voters haven't surged past and exceeded the bounds of those remaining old fashioned voters to continue to control the outcome even before the Census would all but guarantee changes to the voting districts within all states currently controlled by rethugs. It's just a matter of time. The tipping point may have already arrived.

I live in blood red Texas and it's just a matter of a couple of years IMO that the Hispanic and non-white voting population overtakes the ability of the rethugs to control the voting outcome. It doesn't take much. I think that's why this election year was considered so crucial by the rethugs. They believed they could cram down permanent voting and Electoral College changes that would guarantee a kind of permanent American Apartheid, but in order to do so it would have required the presidency to be in the hands of of a rethug so that they could pack the SCotUS.

isn't there something still in the constitution.

If a state legislature wanted to, they could just say "we're going to appoint whoever we want to the Electoral college".

There will be an uproar like those assholes have never seen.

Then why don't we change the Constitution?

The answer is that requires a supermajority of......... State legislatures.

That's why they've put so much effort into getting R legislative majorities and governors in states whose populations aren't quite all that red.

Repubs realize they have dwindling chances of winning the presidency, so do what they do best, cheat, while at the same time spin it that they're not cheating.
Move the goalposts, trip opponents, swiftboat candidates, impose photo ID laws, gerrymander districts to repub advantage, filibuster to obstruct almost all democrat initiatives. Argue that electoral vote apportionment based on districting creates a fairer electoral process, BUT ONLY IN STATES WHICH VOTE DEMOCRAT.

Under {first} plan Mr. Obama would have split the Pennsylvania haul with Romney 12 to 8. A similar plan .. by 2 GOP House members would award electoral votes by how many of the state's 18 congressional districts a candidate won, with the popular winner getting two extras. Under that plan Romney would have taken 13 electoral votes and Obama 7 {Fair? where one district of 50,000 voters carries same weight as philadelphia with over 500,000?}

If Pennsylvania and other swing states adopted the {state of} Virginia model, Romney would have won with 280 electoral votes to Obama's 258, accdg to FairVote, a Maryland-based election reform group. If the swing states adopted the Pileggi model, Mr. Obama still would have won with a 36-vote electoral vote margin, down from the 106-vote cushion he enjoyed last month.
Should GOP legislators in control of both houses rally around the change -- as they did voter ID -- there is little Democrats can do about it. {Gov} Corbett endorsed the first Pileggi electoral vote plan in the summer of 2011 and the latest effort is "under review

asked why no Republican-voting states are adopting similar plans. "Is Texas going to split its vote in half, or are only blue battleground states rendering themselves irrelevant? Are we willing to sacrifice Pennsylvania's voice for the greater partisan good of the Republican party?" he asked. ........ Oh! there was no answer!

The state has nearly 1,000,000 more registred Ds than Rs, and the democratic candidate for President has won by good margins for two decades now. This last election, the president and Bob Casey won by over 5 points, but SOMEHOW we had 13 republicans win in the 18 House districts.

This state has BY FAR the worst gerrymanded districts in the country, and it goes to the state level. The state Senate has a MORTAL republican lock, and the House only swings in BIG democratic years.

We got the worst ID law in the state passed and upheld by one jackass judge, who was forced by the state supreme court (which punted it back to him instead of rightly repealing it) to put a one year stay on it. And, while some fought it tooth and nail, overall people just slept through it.

I worked my house and senate guys (both Rs) when this divide the electoral vote thing came up a year ago, and when the morons in Harrisburg put their fingers to the wind they felt the best way to go was the voter ID law.

But, the issue here is a state where people simply are willing to let Republicans be partisan jackasses. The core democratic base is loaded in smaller geographic areas and will come out on the big elections, but the overall populace is more than willing to let republicans run the state however they want.

cosmocat: I worked my house and senate guys (both Rs) when this divide the electoral vote thing came up a year ago...

I'm in northeast pennsy near scranton wilkes barre, & next to barletta, former hazelton mayor who supported anti immigration laws there, later ruled unconstitutional to some extent. Lou Barletta benefitted from repub gerrymandering.
.. Barletta's a creepy guy, he took out a tv ad likening democrat Kanjorski (his opponent 2010) to a sofa slob sitting on a couch flicking potato chips into the cushions, you could almost see him nosepicking (tho he didn't go quite that far), with people around kanjo getting up & leaving him in disgust, an awful tv commercial worthy of a sub standard barletta, since kanjo had been a public servant for maybe 30 years & was well respected.
.. I complained about it online & they stopped running the ad. Maybe it was me eh?

.. this is the kind of crap repubs excel at, cheapshot artists & conmen, that their legislators are.
PS I think my own rep is Yankovich? or something like that, abashed that I can't recall it.

my state guys, both party Rs, but not complete ass hats.

They know me, they know my politics.

I save it for important things, and I think they take what I come to them to heart.

My congressman is atrocious.

One of the safest R districts in the country and he is nothing more than a glorified county party chair.

He isn't a tea party guy per se, but he is a true believer and fits in well with the House's complete disdain for our President.

...would be to abolish the electoral college and have the president and vice-president elected directly by popular vote.

I mean even though more people voted to have a democrat represent them in the US House, thanks to gerrymandering, Dems only won 5 of 18 seats.

Obama won and I believe there were more votes for Democrats in House races, but there are far more Republicans elected.

Redrawing districts should really be a non-partisan thing. Get the number of people, divide by x number of seats and draw lines that don't look like the person drawing them had a seizure.