The move to steal about half of California’s electoral votes has been quashed for now. The folks with the deep pockets behind the campaign apparently weren’t willing to collect legitimate signatures for their ballot initiative, preferring, in time honored Republican fashion, to do it by fraud. Unfortunately for them, they were caught, so they had to withdraw the initiative. We may not have seen the last of this. This is the second time they have had to back off, but expect them to come back again.
In case you’re not familiar with the proposal, it seeks to allocate California’s electoral votes by Congressional District. If the Republican candidate wins in 15 districts, for instance he (no need to say “or she”) gets 15 electoral votes. If such a proposal were adopted nationwide it might be something of an improvement over what we now have, but probably not. It is entirely possible that a candidate could get 60% of the votes in a given state, but only 40% of the electoral votes, if that candidate did extremely well in a few districts and lost narrowly in a lot of the others. Such a result is not unlikely, what with the way districts are often gerrymandered.
A fairer way would be to allocate the votes proportionally. Even better, there is a plan being floated whereby a state could pass an act allocating its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote if and only if a sufficient number of states comprising a majority of the electoral college follow suit.
Of course, the Republicans behind the California shenanigans are not interested in being fair. They are interested in finding yet another way to subvert the national will. Suppressing Democratic votes may not work in 2008.
Speaking of suppressing the vote, there’s a documentary on PBS tonight on Now, documenting the spreading movement in the backwater states to restrict the vote-the Democratic vote that is. It’s on WGBH at 8:00 PM
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