Free Republic

ASHINGTON — A proposed ballot initiative to change how California casts its mother lode of 55 electoral votes is far from passage, but it's already shaking up national politics because it could derail the Democrats' bid to recapture the White House. A GOP lawyer in Sacramento is pushing the measure that would allocate the state's electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-take-all. Depending on your perspective, that's either a step toward election reform or a backdoor attempt to tilt the 2008 election to Republicans. The political math is compelling. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry captured 54.3 percent of the...

A proposed ballot initiative being circulated to change how California awards its presidential electoral votes is so irksome to Sen. Dianne Feinstein that she is vowing to change the U.S. Constitution. Democrats say the so-called Presidential Electoral Reform Act -- which would throw out the Golden State's winner-take-all system -- is nothing but a ruse to win the Republicans the White House by assuring them at least 20 of California's 55 electoral votes. "I think this effort to essentially skew the presidential system ... would directly change the election," Feinstein said in an interview. So California's senior senator said she...

The chutzpah award for this summer has a runaway winner. It's the small team of Republican operatives trying to rig the 2008 presidential race. "Rig" means tilting the playing field to assure continued Republican occupancy of the White House -- perhaps for a very long time. The GOP would do this by ending the winner-take-all system of parceling out electoral college votes in Democratic-leaning California. Instead of all 55 of California's electoral votes being awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote statewide -- presumably the Democrat -- they'd be divvied up by congressional district. Whichever candidate carried a...

So if this initiative were to get on the ballot and pass, it would mean that even if the state continued to vote for a Democrat for president, as it has for the past four elections, a Republican would still get some electoral votes. Under this method, Bush would have gotten 19 in 2000 and Gore 35. In 2004, Bush would have gotten 22 electoral votes and Kerry 33. Democrats are furious over the prospect of a district by district scheme. They say that unless such a change was made in every state in the union, it would be unfair...

aine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes by congressional district, and that's what the proposed California ballot measure would do. Each candidate would receive one electoral vote for every congressional district he or she captured. The statewide winner would be awarded the two electoral votes representing the state's two Senate seats. The initiative was filed by Republican lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, who hopes to qualify it for the June 2008 ballot if he and his associates -- GOP figures all -- can raise enough money. If they make it and the measure were to be approved by voters, it would be...

Democrats are growing anxious about a state initiative filed last month by a prominent Republican attorney to change the way California assigns its presidential electors, even though the proposal has no discernible financial backers yet. Rather than assign all of California's 55 electoral votes to one candidate under the current winner-take-all system, the initiative would split the nation's largest electoral bounty between two or more candidates. Filed by GOP lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, it would give a presidential candidate one electoral vote for each congressional district he or she wins in California, plus two additional votes to whomever wins a plurality...