Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate and author of a 2011 plan to phase out Medicare, was a leader of the Republican Party’s right-wing long before Gov. Mitt Romney tapped him as his running mate. Yet even he opposes a Republican plan to rig future presidential races for Republicans by changing the way electoral votes are counted:
Wisconsin’s U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the unsuccessful 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee, is the latest Republican to throw cold water on the notion of switching the way Wisconsin apportions its Electoral College votes — a shift that would have benefited his running mate, Mitt Romney. . . . Ryan, R-Janesville, said he would prefer that Wisconsin stay a winner-take-all state.“I’ve always kind of liked the idea of being targeted as a state,” Ryan told the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board on Tuesday. “I’d hate to be a flyover state. I’d like to be in the hunt for being a targeted state. I think it’s good for us.”
Notably, Ryan’s argument — that allocating all of Wisconsin’s votes to the winner of the state as a whole ensures that presidential candidates pay more attention to the state — is an argument against both versions of the GOP election-rigging plan.
Republicans originally proposed rigging the Electoral College by allocating electoral votes in key blue states one-by-one to the winner of each congressional district, rather than to the winner of the state as a whole. This month, however, Pennsylvania Republicans are expected to introduce a modified election-rigging plan in that state which would allocate electoral votes proportionally according to the popular vote — so that a Republican candidate who receives 40 percent of the vote would also receive a little less than 40 percent of the state’s electoral votes, even if the Democratic candidate wins the state as a whole. Significantly, the Pennsylvania plan would not apply in red states, so those states would continue to award 100 percent of their electors to the Republican.
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