A Hard Ball Response to the Republican Electoral College Plot in California

Silly to spend money on initiatives that counter an initiative that will lose.

The smart lawyers who came up with the scheme to allocate electoral votes by CD should have hired a smart lawyer that knew something about ballot measures.

The title and summary of this measure - when shown to voters - produces a 25 percent yea to 48 percent no vote, with another fourth undecided. Ballot measures with initial numbers like that never win.
Repeat, never win.

So relax. Do nothing. Let the GOP spend its' money and lose.

My guess is that the GOP won't put any money behind this. Its writers already achieved their first goal, which was to stop the much-farther-along identical effort by the Democratic party in North Carolina to do the exact same thing (though on an admittedly smaller scale).

For those who missed it, the bill in North Carolina (to do what Republicans in California propose) had already passed the Democratic-controlled House and Senate in NC, and was on its way to the Democratic Governor for an expected signature. When CA Republicans introduced their measure, the national Democrats recognized the need to demonize the CA proposal so they stepped in to kill the NC bill.

I don't think this proposal is a good idea, either here in CA or in North Carolina, (from my narrow perspective, this approach makes gerrymandering even more tempting and makes redistricting even more difficult to reform) but let's be clear about who proposed it first.

Well, the Republicans are putting money behind the initiative.
Signature gatherers are collecting signatures on the Sac State campus on the Republican initiative to change the way California distributes the state’s electoral votes.

Those gathering signatures are deliberately misrepresenting the initiative as sponsored by the Democratic Party. When I confronted one operative, he seemed confused. He really did not understand the initiative, he was just earning money.
Since some of the signatures were gathered under false pretenses, the initiative should be challenged in the courts.

Johnson should realize that these Republican efforts hurt the concept of redistricting "reform". Perata obviously had a belly-full of Republican use of ill-gotten procedural changes (the 2/3rd's vote) to advance their anti-majority agenda and was particularly willing to deal on redistricting, particularly given this latest Republican atrocity (the electoral college "reform") being submitted during the budget crisis.

Republicans now have a (well-deserved) reputation for doing anything to change the rules of the game to keep themselves in power (Florida 2000, Supreme Court packing, voter caging, DOJ investigations into non-existant voter "fraud", the 2/3rd's vote, etc). If Republican every want to be taken seriously again (and this is going to be hard after the last seven years), they are going to have to abjure these tactics and start describing "reforms" in an honest, straight-forward manner about who benefits and who loses. An obvious example is on Republican tax cut policies, claiming they helped the middle class when middle class incomes are stagnant or declining and most of the benefits went to the top 1/10 of 1%. Democratic candidates are now vying with one another to announce "tax-the-rich" schmes which will almost certainly be enacted, with 250-260 Democratic seats in the house and nearly 60 in the Senate. Republican hypocrisy and greed has simply caused the Republicans to commit suicide, not even assisted. I hope the Republican party which is built on the ashes of this one has some semblence of integrity (intellectual and financial) and not act like Rush Limbaugh is an example for reasoned argument and Jesse James was an example for fiscal restraint.

Breaking News: Shadow Money Funding Republican CA Efforts Exposed!!!

Shadow Money
Republicans are making a move in California that would greatly benefit their efforts to retain the White House. ABC7 News wanted an answerer to our question: Who's behind this effort? A shadowy GOP group not even located in California!
Watch the Video here!
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=5677389

Shadow Money Funding Republican CA Efforts
By Mark Matthews
SAN FRANCISCO Sep.26 2007 (KGO) - Republicans are making a move that would greatly benefit their efforts to retain the White House. ABC7 News wanted an answerer to our question: Who's behind this effort?
In the last presidential election, John Kerry won California and got all of the state's 55 electoral votes.
The initiative backed by Californians For Equal Representation would've split the state by congressional districts and George W. Bush would've picked up 22 of the 55 votes.
If it goes that way in 2008, it will be much harder for a Democrat to win the White House.
Last week when questioned, the reply given was "It's a bunch of people from California trying to do right by Californians," said Kevin Eckery, Californians For Equal Representation
ABC7 News was curious on where the funding for the CFER is coming from. We pressed him by suggesting that some have speculated the money could be coming from a big red state like Texas, which wouldn't be fair considering that like California, Texas doesn't split it's electoral votes.
What Kevin Eckery didn't tell us was that all money for the California Initiative Drive is coming from a lawyer in Missouri.
Today Eckery says "I never said all the money is coming from California”...in fact none of the money has come from California...
Chris Llehane is a Democratic strategist working to defeat the proposed initiative.
"The one check they have for $175,000 dollars which is paying for the signature gathering as we speak, comes from some shadowy organization based in Union, Missouri...population 7,000," says Llehane .
Llehane says the man fronting that Missouri group is the same guy who formed another front group in 2004 to try and get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Nevada and several other battleground states.
"They specifically picked states where they thought if Nader can get on the ballot, they can get one or two or three points away from the Democrats and could've potentially tilted those states to the Republican George W. Bush in that election."
Arnold Schwarzenegger told our Nannette Miranda that he hasn't read the initiative but that he is leaning away from it because it seems like a "loser's mentality".
But until just a few months ago, the Sacramento lawyer who is behind the initiative was the governor's personal lawyer for election matters.
The governor's former lawyer, Thomas Hitachi, is running the initiative drive out of his offices in Sacramento. His partner, Chuck Bell is legal counsel to the state Republican Party and is deputy treasurer to the initiative drive. He shares something in common with the head of the Missouri group that's donating the money; both are financial supporters of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.
Bell has contributed $1,300 dollars and Charles Hurth in Union, Missouri has given $2,000 dollars to Giuliani. ABC7 News called Giuliani's campaign for a comment and have yet to hear back --same goes for the governor on his ties to Hitachi.
To see how the past can come back and bite you, read The Back Story

Watch the Video here
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=5677389

Another Ditty GOP Trick To Try & steal The White House
September 26, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- Until this week, Missouri attorney Charles "Chep"Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in a bar.

Now Hurth, the city attorney for New Haven, Mo., - population 1,800 - is the agent for a deep-pocketed group that donated $175,000 to fund a Republican-backed effort that would reshape the landscape of presidential politics in California.

Hurth has emerged as an unlikely lead player in connection with the ballot measure that seeks to change the way California allocates its electoral college votes in the president election. His actions on behalf of "Take Initiative America" are being examined by the state's Fair Political Practices Commission after accusations from Democrats that the group is hiding the source of its money.

It's not the first time Hurth has been part of an effort that Democrats say has been aimed at changing the outcome of a presidential election. In 2004, he was the legal agent behind a GOP-funded group called "Choices for America," which solicited donations from Republicans for another controversial signature drive - to help independent candidate Ralph Nader get on the presidential election ballot in key states, documents show.

Hurth didn't answer repeated phone calls seeking comment this week. But those who know him say they're mystified at his connections to such a high-profile issue that would shape politics half way across the country.

"To my knowledge, he's not involved in local politics to any degree," says Steve Roth, city administrator in tiny New Haven, which is 50 miles from St. Louis. He says Hurth has been on retainer as city attorney since 2004, billing $100 an hour in his work for the town, and "he's a nice guy."

But Hurth is the registered agent for "Take Initiative America," a tax-exempt group formed Sept. 10, 2007, according to the organization's incorporation documents. A day later, the group made its hefty donation to fund petition gathering that would get the so-called Presidential Election Reform Act on the June ballot.

The donation was the only reported contribution to the ballot measure campaign, according to financial documents released earlier this week.

The proposed ballot measure would change the "winner take all" election rules in Democratic-leaning California for the state's 55 electoral votes. It would allocate the electoral college votes based on the popular vote winner in each individual congressional district - providing an unexpected windfall for Republicans.

Leading Democratic presidential candidates and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have charged the effort is a Republican "dirty trick" to change the election rules in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign.

But Hurth's connections - or more precisely, his utter lack of connections to politics in California - have raised cries of foul play and suggestions that a major GOP presidential candidate could be behind the matter.

http://opinion.gaynewsblog.net/2007/09/another-ditty-gop-trick-to-try-steal.html

REJECT THE REPUBLICAN POWER GRAB IN CALIFORNIA!
http://www.fairelectionreform.com/
You can also Watch the Video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=BHICw5M-viQ

CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN':
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=146961

butt biters for election stealing
http://3rdave.blogspot.com/2007/09/butt-biters-for-election-stealing.html

Reporting on $175K donation, LA Times did not mention that GOP is behind CA electoral-vote initiative
http://mediamatters.org/items/200709260008

Mystery man's key role in move to change Electoral College http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/27/MNNCSDUH6.DTL

Shadow Money Funding Republican CA Efforts Exposed!!!
Shadow Money
Republicans are making a move in California that would greatly benefit their efforts to retain the White House. ABC7 News wanted an answerer to our question: Who's behind this effort? A shadowy GOP group not even located in California!
Watch the Video here!
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=5677389

Ironical that the electoral initiative got bogged down because of money. There is no fair way to divide the electoral college other than to abandon it or disembowel it witrh the awarding all of each states electors to the popular vote winner. All these stupid gimmicks do is increase the chance that the popular vote loser will win the election - an inversion. The democrats should push for the initiative for each state to award all their electoral votes to the popular vote winner. The more states that pass it, the less likely of an inversion - even if the necessary sates for 270 electoral votes is not achieved. Democrats will lose more than they can if they win if they get into that game of dividing up the states electoral contingent.

Sorry, comments are temporarily disabled. We're doing a bit of server maintenance on the commenting area. We'll be back up and running shortly. Thank you for your patience.