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Thomas Fitzgerald: Pa. measure to split electoral votes is hard to size up

Senate Bill 538 just might be one of the oddest pieces of legislation in the Harrisburg hopper this session. Republican leaders say: Move on, there's nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. It's not going anywhere.

Senate Bill 538 just might be one of the oddest pieces of legislation in the Harrisburg hopper this session.

Republican leaders say: Move on, there's nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. It's not going anywhere.

Democrats, on the other hand, are making noise and campaigning against S.B. 538 as if it were an imminent threat to freedom itself.

The measure, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), would split Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes proportionally in future presidential elections instead of awarding all of them to the winner. The stated idea is that small towns and rural areas, often overlooked in presidential campaigns, would have a greater say in battleground states like Pennsylvania.

Of course, it's just a coincidence that Republican nominees have lost the state in the last six presidential elections, getting exactly zero electoral votes.

People for the American Way (PFAW), the liberal advocacy group, has a national fund-raising appeal going to get money to battle the Pileggi plan, and has organized canvassing, as well as staging a series of rallies featuring prominent Democrats in recent weeks.

Volunteers with the group have knocked on more than 5,000 doors in Chester, Media, Bristol, Allentown, Lancaster, and Willow Grove - municipalities in the districts of pivotal members of the GOP state Senate majority.

"Rigging the rules is not the Pennsylvania way, not the American way," State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.) said at a recent PFAW news conference in Center City.

Since Pennsylvania is a fairly competitive state in presidential elections, changing the Electoral College allocation would mean that the loser of the state's popular vote would still come away with a sizable chunk of electoral votes. Opponents, including Republican Sen. Chuck McIlhenny of Bucks County, note that it would reduce the state's power.

"We will have the electoral-vote clout of Wyoming," said Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, a Democrat. "Why would we on our own want to reduce our own impact? It makes no sense."

Randy Borntrager, political director of PFAW, noted Gov. Corbett's silence on the bill and equated it with "tacit support." The governor's office said Monday that Corbett has no position on the matter and is focused on the budget and his legislative agenda.

The GOP Senate leadership says nothing has changed since controversy began over the idea earlier this year, and S.B. 538 is still not a priority.

Said one top Republican, with a mixture of exasperation and perhaps admiration, the electoral-vote proposal is a dead issue - "but Democrats are determined to squeeze some political benefit out of it anyway."

So much of politics today involves stoking the fears of your base voters to keep them on edge, ready for battle - and writing checks. Republicans have used the prospect of voter fraud for the last few years.

But to Democrats, the electoral-vote plan is still a live grenade rolling around the floor of the legislature. If it's just a conversation piece, why does it remain on the table? Plenty of bills long thought dead have been resurrected and moved through in the rush to finish the annual budget by June 30.

Perhaps the ruckus raised by Democrats has made the GOP skittish. But the real clincher against the measure is the blowback that happened the last time lawmakers and Corbett tinkered with elections - the 2012 Voter ID bill.

Designed, as famously stated by House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), to make it easier for GOP nominee Mitt Romney to carry Pennsylvania, Voter ID wound up having the opposite effect. The law not only was snagged by still-unresolved court challenges - it inspired so much outrage that it boosted enthusiasm and turnout among Democrats in 2012.

Next year, the Republicans will have at the top of their ticket a governor with historically low approval numbers. Strategically, the best thing going for Corbett is that 2014 is a midterm election, when voter turnouts are smaller than in presidential years, and the party holding the White House tends to do worse than the "out" party.

Why would the GOP want to hand a weapon to its opponents?