I assume that because the Republicans can steal most of the Electoral College votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, that they will at least try to do so. Virginia, Florida and Ohio, I think they will leave alone. Let me explain what I am talking about.
As far as I know, there are 48 states that award their Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis. Maine and Nebraska give their 2 senate votes to the statewide winner, too, but they award the rest of their delegates to the winner of each congressional district. In 2008, Barack Obama lost Nebraska rather badly, but he won the congressional district containing Omaha, and he was awarded one delegate from the state.
Legally, there is no reason that all 50 states couldn’t do the same thing. But most state governments have no incentive to water down the power of their state or to allow the weaker party to gain any share of their delegates. For example, Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas would never go for this kind of reform because it would only weaken their candidate for president. But if the traditionally weaker party can gain control of the legislature of a state while controlling the governor’s mansion, they can capture electoral votes that they are unlikely to win any other way. That condition is now met in the states mentioned above.
The key is, the whole thing backfires on you if your presidential candidate actually wins the state. I think the Republicans probably believe that they still have a shot at winning Florida, Virginia and Ohio outright, so they won’t want to tinker with the Electoral College there, but I think they probably see Wisconsin and definitely see Michigan and Pennsylvania as lost causes.
Just doing Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would give the next Republican nominee a likely boost of about 27 electoral votes. It’s the rough equivalent of stealing Florida. If they did this in all the states where they have the technical power to do it, they’d gain 64 votes, which coincidentally is exactly the number Mitt Romney would have needed to get to 270 and win the presidency. And, no, there are no states where we could reciprocate.
Obviously, the optics of doing this in just a few states where it is transparently designed to confer an uneven advantage to the Republicans would be at least as bad as the trillion dollar coin. But why would the Republicans care? If they don’t pull a stunt like this, they’ll have to actually abandon their unpopular conservative delusions and become a moderate, inclusive party. Fuck that.
And it’s not illegal.