[lit-ideas] Re: Yo, Californians!

Not all of us over (not "down") here are commie pinko preverts.  :-)

Lawrence

San Jacinto, California



------------Original Message------------
From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, Aug-26-2007 11:01 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Yo, Californians!
What the hell are you guys doin' down there???

Julie Krueger

August 24, 2007
  
(CNN) — California voters are inclined to support a proposed ballot measure 
that Democratic leaders fear could doom the party's chances of winning back the 
White House in 2008 by giving Republicans a chunk of the state's large block of 
Electoral College votes, according to results of a poll released this week.
By a margin of 47 percent to 35 percent, the Field Poll found voters supported 
a GOP-inspired ballot measure replacing the state's winner-take-all method for 
awarding electoral votes with a system that would give one vote to the 
candidate who won the most votes in each of the state's 53 congressional 
districts and two votes to the statewide winner.
Had that system been in place in 2004, President Bush, who lost California to 
the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, would still have captured 22 of the 
state's 55 electoral votes. Under the winner-take-all system, Kerry got them 
all.
The proposed change would be damaging to Democrats, who have come to rely on 
California's block of votes — the largest haul available in any state — as part 
of their arithmetic to get to an Electoral College majority. For instance, in 
2004, if Bush had taken those 22 California electoral votes, he would not have 
needed to carry the pivotal state of Ohio, with 20 electoral votes, to go over 
the top.
"This would all but guarantee that the Republican nominee would get 20 extra 
Electoral College votes, which could certainly impact the outcome of the 
election," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican strategist.
And that is exactly what has Democrats crying foul.
"The Republicans are doing this in California because they want a chunk of our 
vote," said Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist.
The Field Poll found that when voters were told of the possible political 
implications of the ballot measure, support shot up among Republicans and 
dropped among Democrats, and the margin of support narrowed. Overall, though, 
supporters still outnumbered opponents, by a margin of 49 percent to 42 
percent, with a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
A group called Californians for Equal Representation is trying to qualify the 
initiative for next June's statewide primary, which would put the change into 
effect for the 2008 election. To get the question on the ballot, supporters 
will have to collect about 424,000 petition signatures from registered voters 
by Nov. 13, according to the Secretary of State's office.
Collecting enough signatures to qualify a statewide initiative "takes about a 
million dollars," Sragow said. However, under state law, there are no 
contribution limits for ballot measure campaigns, which makes it easier to 
raise large amounts of money.
The initiative was submitted by Thomas Hiltachk, a Sacramento election lawyer 
who is also general counsel for Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 
purpose of the change, according to the language in the initiative, is to make 
California more relevant in presidential elections by forcing candidates to 
campaign in the state, which a Republican hasn't carried since 1988.
Under the Constitution, each state gets a number of electoral votes equal to 
its representation in Congress, including both representatives and senators, 
and the District of Columbia gets three. State governments decide how to award 
those votes, and 48 states give all of them to the candidate who wins the 
largest number of popular votes, as does the District of Columbia.
Two states — Nebraska and Maine — have adopted the system that is being 
proposed for California, assigning their electoral votes based on who wins 
individual congressional districts, with the statewide winner getting the two 
votes derived from senators. But this has not generated controversy because 
both states have just a handful of votes and the results have never resulted in 
splitting them between candidates.
The disputed 2000 election, in which Bush won the electoral vote — and the 
presidency — while losing the popular vote, has generated a flurry of proposals 
to abolish or alter the Electoral College, both at the federal and state level.
In 2006, Colorado voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have 
divided up the electoral vote pie in proportion to each candidates' share of 
the popular vote. Also, a group called National Popular Vote is lobbying state 
legislatures to adopt a system where all of a state's electoral votes would be 
pledged to the winner of the national popular vote, which, if enough states 
adopt the plan, would ensure the popular vote winner always became president.
A group of California Democrats are trying to counter the GOP-backed ballot 
measure with a proposition of their own that would implement the National 
Popular Vote plan in the Golden State, as long as states with a majority of the 
electoral votes also agree to use the same system.
However, the political implications of that change could be even worse for 
Democrats. If that method had been in place in 2004, Bush, as the winner of the 
national popular vote, would have taken all 55 of California's electoral votes, 
despite the fact that Kerry beat him by 10 points statewide.

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