How Republicans Plan to (i.e. Will) Rig the Electoral College and Steal the White House

[Bill USA]

The Corporate Lobbyist party realizing the odds are longer and longer on them winning anymore Presidential elections (even by buying them).. they have decided it's better to just circumvent a democratic election altogether. This approach has its beauty (to fascists) for its simplicity.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2013/01/24/50459/grand-theft-election/

If a Republican plan to rig the Electoral College had been in effect in 2012, however, it is reasonably likely that President Romney would be the one meeting with his new cabinet officials in the Oval Office. Under current law, most states allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole. This Republican Plan to rig future elections, however, would change this in several blue states where Democrats are likely to carry the state’s full slate of electors. Texas, South Carolina, and other safe red states would therefore continue to deliver every single one of their electoral votes to the Republican candidate, while blue states such as Pennsylvania or Michigan would have to give away half or more of theirs to the Republican ticket. The result is a giant thumb on the scale for Republicans, enabling them to take the White House even when the electorate strongly prefers the Democratic candidate.

How the Republican election-rigging plan works

This Republican Plan would reallocate electoral votes so that a maximum of two electoral votes would go to the overall winner of several key blue states. The lion’s share of the state’s electors would then be allocated one by one to the presidential candidate who won each individual congressional district. (see Figure 1) Thus, in a blue state such as Michigan—which President Obama won by nearly 10 points in 2012—Gov. Romney would have received 9 of the state’s 16 electoral votes because he received more votes than the president did in nine of the state’s congressional districts. In other words, the Republican candidate would receive more than half of the state’s electoral votes despite being overwhelmingly defeated in the state as a whole.




Cashing in on gerrymandering

The Republican Plan does not just apply one set of rules in red states and another set of rules in blue states—it also takes advantage of profoundly gerrymandered congressional maps in order to stack the deck even more for Republican presidential candidates. In 2012 Democratic House candidates received nearly 1.4 million more votes than their Republican counterparts. Yet Republican candidates currently hold a 33-seat majority in the House, due in large part to the fact that Republican state legislatures controlled the redistricting process in several key states. Indeed, Republicans were so successful in their efforts to lock in their control of the House of Representatives through gerrymandering that Democratic House candidates would have needed to win the national popular vote by more than 7 percentage points in order to receive the barest majority in the House. Republicans aren’t particularly shy about touting the success of their gerrymanders either: The Republican State Leadership Committee released an extensive memo boasting about how they used gerrymanders to lock down GOP majorities in the House.

The impact of the current congressional maps is most profound in six key states. As explained above, President Obama did win Michigan by nearly 10 points, but Democratic candidates won only 5 of the state’s 14 congressional seats. Likewise, President Obama won Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—in some cases by comfortable margins—but Republicans dominate the congressional delegations from these states.

[font size="3"] ... of course, you know what they will say when the apathetic electorate finally wakes up in 2016
realizing they just got royally screwed: "GET OVER IT!"

... just like after the Grand Theft Election 2000.[/font]

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[daybranch]

1. In Ohio

We are organizing to fight the Gerrymandering that would allow this to occur. Cal your League of Women Voters and ask what they plan to do. The one in my area plans to keep fighting? Find out what your areas League plans to do and why? Join the movement in Ohio- Stop Gerrymandering now!!! Every vote must count the same!!

[Bill USA]

2. Some more links regarding stopping gerrymandering

STOP GERRYMANDERING TODAY - ACTBLUE
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/utredistricting

Stop Gerrymandering now - Facebook

How to Halt Gerrymandering - The New Republic

As this decade’s redistricting cycle begins, Republicans are licking their lips in anticipation. They already hold a sizeable 48-seat advantage in the House of Representatives. Thanks to their sweeping 2010 victories in state races, they will also have complete control over how 193 congressional districts are redrawn (compared to just 44 for the Democrats). In pivotal states like Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, Republicans will be able to gerrymander to their heart’s content—to protect their own incumbents and target vulnerable Democrats for electoral eradication.

Is there anything that Democrats (or fans of fair districts) can do to stop this onslaught? Wisconsin-style walkouts are one option, but even more promising are popular initiatives and referenda. Through the initiative process, available in about half the states, voters can place measures on the ballot that either impose strict criteria on how districts are drawn or transfer authority over redistricting from partisan legislatures to independent commissions. Through referenda, available in a similar number of states, voters can block legislatively enacted district plans from ever coming into effect. If the looming wave of gerrymandering is to be averted, both forms of direct democracy need to be used as aggressively—and as soon—as possible.

Not surprisingly, scholars have found that the policies advanced by initiatives and referenda tend to result in better district plans. University of Mississippi professor Jonathan Winburn determined that, in the 2000 cycle, redistricters were mostly unable to skew lines to their advantage when they had to design districts that were compact, respectful of political subdivisions, and attentive to geographic communities (all requirements commonly written into initiatives). Another recent study by political scientists at the University of Georgia and Michigan State University concluded that commission-drawn maps result in more competitive elections than plans designed by self-interested politicians.

Despite these advantages, most efforts to fight gerrymandering via direct democracy have failed. After examining redistricting initiatives from 1936 to 2005, I found that about two-thirds of them were defeated, usually because of the intense opposition of the state’s majority party. The measures were approved by the public only when some atypical factor—e.g., national scandal, Supreme Court intervention—reduced the effectiveness of the majority party’s resistance.
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