What's next....
In November 2010, the GOP walked away with the trifecta in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania: house, senate and governorship. Seizing on the opportunity they now control they have been trying to push right to work legislation, which I have commented on in past articles and will focus on as the legislature returns next Monday. Yet, a more pervasive measure is coming out of Harrisburg then the run of the mill right wing attack on workers. This one attacks the compilation of electoral votes in a presidential election.
Senate Majority leader Dominic Pillegi (R) and Governor Corbett (R) want to change the winner-take all electoral college tallying to a district's tally. According to John Baer a columnist with the Philadelphia Daily News, Senate Majority Leader Pillegi stated that the reform
"will more accurately reflect the preference of Pennsylvania voters." (http://www.philly.com/...)
, Baer goes further by stating that the majority leader hopes that he could get a hearing this October, with passage before the 2012 election. The Republicans fear that President Obama will carry Pennsylvania, a battleground swing state that has favored Democrats since Reagen. In the mind of the GOP, if we can't get the 21 electoral votes from the commonwealth, they could steal about nine with this plan. While a national system of district based voting would better represent the people according to Ian Millhiser of thinkprogress
"But when a major blue state’s Republican leadership adopts this kind of reform piecemeal, it is nothing less than an attempt to rig the election." (http://thinkprogress.org/...)
This is just the latest from a surge of radical measures from the far right to keep control at all costs. Fear of ever changing dynamics of ethnic growth and urban areas being more often liberal, the GOP is trying at all costs to take what they can while they can. Increased voter ID restriction, right to work legislation, restricting  LGBT civil liberties when will the party that claims to be for the rights of individuals stop attacking those rights. When will Americans show up in force at the ballots, or have the liberals, progressives, centrists and even moderate republicans just resigned ourselves to complaining while the far right acts?