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A Plot Afoot in California to Swing State to Republican Presidency |
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As Woody Guthrie once sang in a ballad about Pretty Boy Floyd, “Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.”
Today in California, Republican strategists a planning a bigger heist than anything the famed outlaw or crooked bankers pulled off in Dust Bowl America. They are trying to rob Californians of their presidential votes in 2008.
The weapon they are wielding is a double-speak ballot initiative that, if approved, would enable the Republican presidential candidate to heist about 20 of the state’s 55 electoral votes, even if the entire Golden State vote count is a double-digit win for the Democratic contender, as it was in 2004.
The ballot initiative would award presidential electoral votes to the winning candidate in each of the state’s congressional districts, drastically changing the current system in which the statewide winner gets California’s 55 electoral votes. With about 20 safe Republican districts, the GOP candidate would get quite a vote haul—about the same as winning the state of Ohio. It takes a majority of the 538 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Only two states, small-vote states Maine and Nebraska, currently award the Electoral College votes by congressional district winner.
The oh-so benignly named Presidential Election Reform Act is the brainchild, says the Los Angeles Times, of Sacramento lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, whose firm represents the California Republican Party and has worked with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). The paper also notes the ballot measure is being backed by former Schwarzenegger fundraiser Marty Wilson, currently one of the money bloodhounds for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Steve Schmidt, another Republican consultant with ties to Schwarzenegger and McCain, told The New York Times that if the election ballot measure is approved and there is a close election:
It would make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House.
Tom Steyer, a California business leader, philanthropist and chairman of Californians for Fair Election Reform, says:
This Republican proposal is dressed up as electoral reform, but it is really an effort to rig the residential election.…Democrats would lose 20 electoral votes, and very likely the presidency, if California abandons the winner-take-all system while large Republican states like Florida and Texas do not. It is no surprise that this measure is the product of the Republican Party and clearly designed to give them a political advantage.
The initiative backers are expected to pour several million dollars into the groundwork and ad campaigns to collect the 433,971 signatures to put the initiative on the June 2008 primary ballot—and likely will spend millions more on general election propaganda. As an added bonus for the Republican backers of the initiative, opponents will be forced to spend millions to fight the vote grab.
Says Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in a recent Huffington Post column:
This isn’t reform—this is a partisan power grab by Republican operatives in the Karl Rove tradition.
4 Comments
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The Electoral College should be abolished, but until it is the proposal to allocate votes in congressional districts rather than the “winner take all” current system is an improvement. Originally, the idea behind the electoral college was to gloss over divisions among society and plump the winner’s margin of victory.
This may have been proposed by Republicans, but it benefits either party and makes every vote count rather than eliminating the votes of those almost winners. Remember 2000! Would we have won if the votes had been distributed by congressional disltrict rather than stolen by the Supremes?
To scream like children “this is a Republican plot” lacks any authority and, in fact, demeans Democrats.
Yes, please. The electoral college was originally put in place because a large percentage of the electorate was illiterate. Since this is no longer the case, I think a nationwide (or statewide x 50) referendum on the issue is about 100 years overdue. Until it’s gone, we will continue to see travesties similar to 2000, where the actual winner loses to a technicality.
It IS a Republican plot. CA will probably go Democrat with its considerable electoral votes. The engineer is an election lawyer who works for Schwarzenegger. I hope the DNC is throwing everything and everyone they have at this. If they allow this referendum, they are going to spend a lot of what otherwise would be campaign dollars fighting it.
Hello there,
I am going to post you a very recent email.
Please read it and realize that its the absolute truth.
I will meet with all of you in DC.
Signed,
An American Patriot Jeff Fisher
Thank you for the article. I will not put my signature on this California initiative. And I will reject the ballot initiative should it appear on the June 28 primary ballot.
Frankly, I am very wary of Republican so-called reforms. In the subject of tax code the GOP creates wealth for millionaires, and sends millions of American jobs overseas. In Medicare reform, the Republicans send billions of dollar in subsidies to Big Pharma while over 41 million Americans are without insurance. In Social Security reform, they threaten to invest SS funds in Wall Street. In foreign policy, they get this country in an American Afghanistan. In immigration reform, the Republicans allow over 11 million immigrants to move to the United States and take American jobs. Enough is enough!