Be careful what you ask for

 State Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware)just won't give up. After his plan to award Pennsylvania's electoral votes by Congressional District went no where he is back with a plan to divvy them up proportionally. If this system was in place last year President Obama would have received 12 EV's to Govenor Romney's 8 instead of all 20 going to the Democrats.

It's easy to see how this plan could backfire. Although PA has voted for the Dems in the last few elections it's not inconceivable that the GOP nominee could win the Commonwealth in 2016 but split the EV's with the Democrat and deny him/her the White House. The other danger is that the 2014 State Legislature races could be nationalized. If this bill passes I can see every Democratic interest group in the country getting involved pouring lot's of money into those races.

Pennsylvania Electoral College votes

Republican State Sen. Dominic Pileggi (pictured at right) is at it again. Last year he proposed that PA award its Electoral College votes by Congressional Districts that was predictably was opposed by Democrats and actually freaked out many Republicans. So his new idea is to divvy it up proportionally.

PoliticsPA: But instead of determining the votes by congressional district, they would be allocated according to percentage of the popular vote, plus two for the statewide winner.

His Memo:  Under the proportional system, two of Pennsylvania’s 20 electors are chosen on a statewide, at-large basis (representing the two senatorial electors).  The remaining 18 electors are chosen based on the percentage of the statewide vote earned by each candidate (rounded to the thousandths).  For example, President Obama won 52.088% of the vote in November.  Under this system, he would have received 12 of Pennsylvania’s 20 electors (the two statewide electors plus 10 of the 18 remaining electors, which would be distributed proportionately).

This doesn't work unless you can get the rest of country to adopt the same system. State Senator Daylin Leach tweeted:  How about when Texas does it too?

The Constitution leaves it up to the states to decide how to cast their electoral votes so the next proposal from Harrisburg might be to skip the election altogether and let the legislature decide the Electoral College votes.