Posted by Shyam Moondra
Republicans have a grand plan for winning the presidential elections in the future - just rig them. Their newly minted plan, being considered by Republican-controlled states such as Virginia and Wisconsin, will allow a presidential candidate to win a state in terms of electoral votes, even if the candidate doesn't get the most popular votes.
Last November, in the state of Virginia, President Barack Obama won a majority of popular votes and thus won all of state's 13 electoral votes under the present winner-take-all rule. However, Virginia's Republican-controlled legislature is currently considering to adopt a new rule which will allocate electoral votes based on the number of congressional districts won (under this proposed rule, Republican candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, would have won 9 electoral votes and Obama would have gotten only 4 electoral votes). Other Republican-controlled states that are reportedly contemplating to adopt similar changes in their electoral vote allocation rules include Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. If this new rule were in effect in these states in 2012, Romney could have won the election.
In effect, Republican states want to destroy the basic premise of democracy in which each person's vote counts. Under the proposed Virginian rule, urban areas with millions of voters with a heavy concentration of Democrats will carry relatively less weight than rural districts with far fewer people dominated by Republicans. Reince Priebus, the re-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, lamented that the idea was "intriguing" and worthy of consideration. However, at the same time, Priebus also said that the Republican Party needs to broaden its appeal. So the question is, how does exactly this extreme undemocratic proposal being pursued by Virginia, Wisconsin and other red states help broaden support?
In addition, some Republican controlled states are trying to pass a law that if a woman undergoes the abortion procedure, she will be committing a felony of destroying the evidence. Evidence of what? Abortion is a legal right that the U.S. Supreme Court granted forty years ago (Roe vs Wade). Do these Republican states want to circumvent the law of the land? Again, how does this extreme tactic help broaden the appeal of the Republican brand, especially to the female voters?
As the disapproval rating of the Republican Party skyrockets, an increasing number of Republicans are beginning to behave like thugs, who would go to any extreme to get what they want even in the face of opposition by an overwhelming number of their constituents. One could expect something like that to happen in Putin's Russia, but not here in the land of freedom, liberty, and justice.
A small minority of extremist elements within the Republican Party are engaged in subversion of our democratic principles and destruction of our legal system. That can't be the basis of becoming a legitimate power entrusted to govern. After the last ugly debt-ceiling debate (that resulted in the downgrade of the rating of the U.S. securities from AAA to AA+) and their twisted and "stupid" statements on rape and abortion (as Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana characterized them), these new crude election strategies will prove to be the final act of self-destruction. The Republican brand is already damaged and their new desperate attempts will only make people to distrust them even more; their continuing "stupid" acts would only mean their guaranteed further losses in the up-coming mid-term elections of 2014.
