Thursday, January 24, 2013

Republicans Preview in Virginia How They Plan to Fix the Next Election

If You Cannot Win Fairly, Win Anyway

It is no secret that part of the Republican strategy is to ‘game’ the system, use legal tactics of dubious ethical content to thwart the will of voters and create Republican victories where they are not warranted.  The mainstay of this strategy is to change the way electoral college votes are cast in Democratic states.

Republicans would change the rules in Democratic states where they control the legislature by moving from a winner take all system to one where electoral votes are split up on a Congressional District basis.  This would allow Republicans to win some electoral votes in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and others that are fairly reliable Democratic states.  Of course, they would not change the rules in states like Texas, where a statewide Republican win is assured.

In a preview of the strategy Republican state senators in Virginia snuck in a provision in a bill to redistrict the state senate so that they would probably gain another seat.  How did they get this passed when the state senate is evenly divided?  Easy, they waited until a Democratic state senator was out of the office and boom, passed the measure.

The revised plan cleared the Senate on a party-line vote of 20-19. Missing this afternoon was Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, who was in Washington for President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.

 The law now goes to the House of Delegates where Republicans have the votes to pass the bill.  So unless the Republican Governor intervenes, and he almost certainly will not, Republicans will have hijacked a state senate seat to improve their chances of controlling the state senate after the next election.

So why would anybody trust Republicans at any level of government?  No one know the answer to that.

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