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Pa. state Sens. Lisa Boscola, Bob Mensch and Pat Browne represent parts of the Lehigh Valley.
State Sen. Lisa Boscola says that the Pennsylvania Legislature Republican leader's effort to end the state’s winner-take-all method of allocating its Electoral College votes for U.S. president could diminish the state on a national level and prevent future candidates from campaigning here.
Boscola, D-Northampton/Lehigh/Monroe, said "the losing candidate is always going to get eight or nine, and the winner 11 or 12. The difference would only be like 3 electoral votes," she said.
"For true reform, the best way is to eliminate electoral college completely," she said. "The time has come for the popular vote."
The bill introduced last week by Senate Majority Leader Dominic
Pileggi, R-Delaware, made a change from a similar proposal that died in
the last legislative session.
Pileggi’s latest proposal would apportion 18 of the 20 votes based on the percentage of votes the candidates draw in the statewide popular vote. The other two votes would go to the overall winner.
The prospects for approval are unclear, as the measure has been blasted by Democrats as vote-rigging. Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has not taken a position and the sponsor says the measure is not near the top of his list of priorities.
State Sen. Bob Mensch, R-Northampton/Lehigh/Bucks/Montgomery, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. He co-sponsored the bill.
Sen. Pat Browne, R-Lehigh/Northampton/Monroe, who also co-sponsored the bill, said the change would be more proportional to the collective voice of the voters. He says Pileggi's proposal would be a better middle ground than Boscola's call to do away with the electoral college.
In the last session, Pileggi sponsored a proposal that would have divided the votes according to who won the 18 congressional districts.
Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson said the approach would be unique among states — the two that currently do not employ a winner-take-all system, Maine and Nebraska, use the congressional district model.
“It’s not a Top 10. It’s not a Top 20 priority,” Arneson said. “It’s an issue we thought was worthy of additional debate and discussion.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Jim Burn said the plan would not help Republicans in the state, which has voted for the Democrat in presidential elections six times in a row, going back to 1992. The 12 other sponsors are all Republicans.
“This is not a popular proposal,” Burn said. “People see through it for what it really is, cheating to win, and many folks in the Republican Party do not want to go near this thing.”
Democratic President Barack Obama won all of the state’s 20 electoral votes last year. He defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the state by more than 5 percentage points, or about 310,000 votes out of more than 5.7 million cast.
Third-party candidates who receive a threshold of votes, or about 6 percent, would collect at least one electoral vote.
Arneson said the next step would be a committee hearing, and that the bill will not be rushed through.
The Associated Press Contributed to this report.