Republican Plan Would Change Presidential Electoral Process in PA

By Caleb Taylor | PA Independent

Voters could face an entirely different process for electing the U.S. president in 2012 under a new Republican proposal to eliminate the “winner-take-all” approach Pennsylvania uses to award electoral votes.

Democrats say the change would lessen Pennsylvania’s role in the presidential process and is an overt political ploy to help Republican candidates. 

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, wants Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes to be awarded on a district-by-district basis, with one vote for each of the state’s congressional districts and two votes for the statewide popular vote winner. The two votes represent the senatorial seats in Congress. 

“Individual Pennsylvania voters have not been as relevant to the process as they should have been (in past presidential elections),” said Pileggi. “The winner-take-all system in the Electoral College does not reflect the diversity of voters in Pennsylvania.” 

Under current law, all of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes are given to the presidential candidate who garners the majority of the popular vote statewide. 

With that system, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 won all 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania with 54 percent of the vote, compared with Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s 44 percent. 

If Pileggi’s proposal was law in 2008, McCain would have received 10 electoral votes because he won the popular vote in 10 congressional districts. Obama would have garnered 11 votes for the nine congressional districts he won plus the two Senate votes for winning the statewide popular vote. 

A Republican presidential candidate has not won the statewide vote in Pennsylvania since George H.W. Bush in 1988. 

Pennsylvania has 21 electoral votes, but that will be reduced to 20 in the 2012 election because the state is losing a seat in the House of Representatives, due to the results of the 2010 national census that indicated a loss of population relative to other states. 

Pileggi's proposal was first reported by CapitolWire this month. 

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, blasted the Republican proposal as a “disturbing effort to put their self-interests and party interests ahead of the people of Pennsylvania.” 

“Sen. Pileggi’s plan would relegate the state--which currently gets significant attention in presidential races--to the status of Nebraska or Maine, reducing the clout Pennsylvania voters currently have on the national level,” Costa said. 

Pileggi responded to charges that his proposal would reduce “the clout Pennsylvania voters currently have on the national level” by saying they “lacked evidence.” 

Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that allocate electoral votes by congressional districts. The other 48 states give all their electoral votes to the winner of the statewide vote. 

Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, said the proposal would be a “big change” because virtually all states “since the Civil War have used (the) winner-take-all” approach. 

Nebraska and Maine “are small and homogeneous. Pennsylvania is a state that is large and heterogeneous. No big state" distributes electoral votes by congressional districts," Madonna said. 

House Republicans, Senate Republicans and Gov. Tom Corbett have voiced support for the proposal. Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Republican leadership, said the plan was not a priority for the fall, but the caucus was interested in improving the power of the vote for Pennsylvanians. 

State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, said the plan was a “blatantly partisan” attempt to benefit GOP candidates. 

“Republican leaders are distressed that their candidates have lost Pennsylvania in the past five elections, and they wish to correct this problem, not by fielding better candidates or making more compelling arguments, but by stacking the deck to ensure their nominees receive the majority of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, regardless of how the people of our state actually vote,” Leach said. 

The governor's office did not return calls for comment. 

If the Republican-controlled state House and Senate pass Pileggi’s plan and Corbett signs it into law in the fall session, the measure could cost the Republican presidential candidate electoral votes in 2012 with 52 percent of voters saying Obama does not deserve to be re-elected, according to a Franklin and Marshall College poll released on Sept. 1, the most recent poll of the state’s voters. 

The poll surveyed 525 adult residents of Pennsylvania with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percent. 

Of Pennsylvania’s 19 House of Representative seats, 12 are held by Republicans and seven are held by Democrats, but the total will be reduced by one in this year’s redistricting process. If electoral votes are tied to congressional districts, the drawing of district lines would become even more important. 

When asked if Pileggi’s plan would make a highly politicized redistricting process even more political since more would be at stake, Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist, said he didn’t think that was possible. 

“Redistricting is already pretty political,” Gerow said.