In what may be called either the last recourse of a desperate party, or the greatest political plan of all time (depending on your political affiliation), a Republican attorney in California is trying to get "The Presidential Election Reform Act" added as a ballot initiative early next year. The initiative, which would be voted on statewide on one of two primary ballot voting days next spring, would change the way California allocates their electoral votes, and would almost certainly guarantee Republican victories in future Presidential elections.
The initiative would change the allocation of California's electoral college votes from a "winner take all system," to a system that awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district's voting, and two "bonus" votes to the overall state winner. This system is used in only two other states: Maine and Nebraska. To give you an idea of what this would mean, out of California's 55 electoral votes that all went to John Kerry in 2004, 22 of those votes would have gone to George Bush under the new system. That would have been despite the fact that John Kerry won the state by double-digit margins.
Although this new approach does have some benefits over the winner-take-all system, implementing it in a hugely democratic state while not doing so in Republican-leaning states, makes it next-to-impossible for a democrat to win the presidency, even if the difference in the national popular vote favored the democrat by 5 or more percentile. Obviously such rigging of an election in nothing new to the Republican party, but an attempt to do so so flagrantly is a bit surprising. Was it not enough to have the Supreme Court instill the George Bush in office, despite his getting less votes nation-wide and votes in Florida going uncounted? Was it not enough to turn away minority voters from the polls illegally, or to attempt to convince minorities that the election was on another day, in 2004? Is 2008 going to be the year when the Republicans achieve their true goal: not just gerry-rigged congressional districts that should have kept them in power in Congress, but a gerry-rigged electoral college map that makes it possible for a Republican candidate with far fewer votes to beat a Democrat candidate with far more? Is this really how the founding fathers envisioned our government? Hopefully, voters in California won't fall for it.
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