[NYTr] Calif Repubs Seek to Rig 2008 Vote

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Carol (activ-l)

World Socialist Web Site - Aug 27, 2007 
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/cali-a27.shtml

California Republicans seek to rig 2008 presidential vote

By our reporter

In a transparent effort to rig the outcome of the 2008 presidential
election, the California Republican Party has launched a petition drive
to place a referendum on the ballot in June 2008 that would split the
state’s huge bloc of electoral votes rather than awarding them based on
the traditional winner-take-all formula.

Since Democratic candidates have carried California in the last four
presidential elections, and are heavily favored to do so again in 2008,
the goal of the ballot drive is to shift 20 or more of the state’s 55
electoral votes to the losing Republican, making it more likely that in
a close national vote a Republican who loses the popular vote could
still win the Electoral College, as Bush did in 2000 after the Supreme
Court awarded him Florida’s electoral votes.

The ballot proposition was drafted by a Republican-backed group taking
the name “Californians for Equal Representation,” set up by Thomas
Hiltachk, a lawyer who was involved in the 2003 recall petition that
ousted Democrat Gray Davis and installed Republican Arnold
Schwarzenegger in the Sacramento statehouse. Hitalchk filed the
language of the referendum with state attorney general Jerry Brown in
late July and supporters have begun gathering the 454,000 signatures
required to win a place on the June 3, 2008 ballot.

The plan would award one electoral vote to the winner of each
congressional district and two additional votes to the statewide
winner. Since 19 of the state’s 53 congressmen are Republicans, a
Republican presidential candidate in 2008 could win the electoral votes
of most of those districts and a few held by conservative Democrats if
the referendum is approved by voters next year.

If the proposed system had been in effect in 2004, President Bush would
have gained 22 electoral votes in California and guaranteed his
reelection even if he had lost the closely contested state of Ohio,
which provided his actual margin of victory in the Electoral College.

The ballot drive is a political dirty trick, not only in its content,
but in its timing. The petition would force a vote in June 2008, the
traditional presidential primary date in California, which was
abandoned earlier this year when the legislature voted to move up the
presidential vote to February 5. The result is that only local offices
and statewide referenda will be on the ballot in June, making a low
turnout very likely.

The ballot proposition is also deceptively marketed as an effort to
ensure “election fairness.” When given only this description,
respondents to a recent poll in California supported the measure 43
percent to 31 percent. After an explanation that the effect would be to
greatly increase the electoral votes available to the Republican
presidential candidate, support dropped considerably.

In a further effort to “game” the result of the June 3 ballot,
right-wing groups have launched other petition drives to place
anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage proposals on the ballot to drive up
turnout among Christian fundamentalists.

According to the US Constitution, state governments may determine how
their electoral votes are awarded. They may—although no state has done
so in more than a century—even award the electoral votes by decision of
the state legislature, without a popular vote. That is what the
Republican-controlled Florida state legislature threatened to do in
2000 before the US Supreme Court stepped in to halt a recount that
would have given the state to Democrat Al Gore.

Currently two small states, Nebraska and Maine, award their electoral
votes district-by-district in the manner proposed in California.
Because of the political homogeneity of the states, their electoral
votes have never actually been split, since the same candidate has
prevailed in each district and statewide. Maine has only two
congressional districts and Nebraska three.

The electoral college system is inherently undemocratic, not so much in
its winner-take-all feature, as in the fact that small states have
inordinate weight. Every state has electoral votes equal to its
combined total of congressmen and senators. Since each state has two
senators regardless of population, there are far more electoral votes
per capita in Wyoming or Vermont than in California or Illinois.

The Republican campaign in California has nothing to do with making the
electoral vote system more democratic. It is rather an effort to
manipulate the outcome of the 2008 presidential election under
conditions where the Republican Party is plunging in opinion polls.