Electoral Update
Republicans who are pushing an initiative to change the way electoral votes are awarded in California have conceded that they don’t have the financial backing to get it on the June 2008 ballot.
Sacramento consultant Dave Gilliard, the campaign manager, said that even if a financial angel were to shower the campaign with $1 million, there was not enough time to qualify the measure for June.
“I was surprised that more people that finance these types of efforts didn’t step forward,” Gilliard said. “We had strong supporters and good supporters but didn’t come anywhere close to making the budget.”
Deadlines passed last week for submitting petitions to elections officials, who would have determined whether supporters had gathered the necessary 434,000 signatures of registered voters. Typically, gathering enough signatures costs about $2 million; organizers must overshoot their mark to allow for invalid names.
Gilliard said proponents were holding out hope that the measure could appear on the November ballot with the presidential contest. But he said that was a dicey scenario: Even if it is on that ballot and wins voter approval, it might not affect the 2008 election.
As Del posted last month, the initiative would ditch California’s current winner-takes-all approach in favor of apportioning votes based on the winners in each Congressional district. The proposal didn’t come from a cross-section of ordinary California citizens, and it doesn’t look like many of them support it. In fact, it was more of a New York effort.
The Electoral College measure first ran into trouble in October when the original proponent, Sacramento attorney Tom Hiltachk, abandoned the campaign. He and his team raised only $175,000. After Hiltachk dropped the measure, Gilliard took it up, vowing to raise $2 million and enlisting the support of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), a longtime client.
Issa donated $100,000, the California Republican Party gave $150,000, and the Lincoln Club of Orange County, an organization of Republican contributors, chipped in $75,000. Several other Republican stalwarts gave four- and five-figure checks. But donations totaled about $1.3 million, well short of the mark.
“Raising money is proving to be a lot more difficult than was anticipated,” Gilliard said.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had expressed skepticism about the measure. And Democrats had mounted an aggressive effort to block it, filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that backers of Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani violated federal regulations by supporting the proposal.
New York hedge fund owner Paul E. Singer, one of Giuliani’s largest fundraisers, had seeded the initiative with the original $175,000 donation. [emphasis added]
Backers didn’t help themselves by hiring signature collectors who were allegedly using the lure of children’s cancer research to suck in marks — I mean citizens — and get them to sign several documents at once, with the electoral college petition on the bottom of the pile. Fortunately, the public is catching on to the bait and switch techniques.
So, it doesn’t look like the people of California are too fired up about making this change. Maybe the out-of-state backers should take what’s left of their money, and their integrity, and go home.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
When are Republicans going to learn that cheating is not winning?
December 12th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Maybe when it stops working — I hope that’s the case in California.
December 13th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I’m sure they don’t think of it as cheating, and technically I don’t really believe it is. This could be classified under what my grandfather used to call, “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” Or in this case, just politics.
To put it mildly, Grandpa wasn’t the nicest guy in the world. But you know what they say about nice guys. On the other hand, you don’t see me naming my kids after him.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Kathy Republicans may be “winning” but it’s not working for America.
Del, if a ball player has to use steroids to “win” that’s cheating. If Republicans want to manipulate the electoral college that’s cheating. Cheating is not winning.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:18 am
“Kathy Republicans may be “winning” but it’s not working for America.”
Yeah, I’ve noticed. That’s why this blog is called Birmingham Blues.
Del, I’m sure they don’t think of it as cheating. They think of it as “bringing honor and dignity back to the White House”. Yep, that’s it.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I don’t think what they were trying to do with the electoral college equates with steroids in baseball. More like the get-arounds some high schools make use of to skirt regulations about red-shirting, starting practice before a certain calendar day, stuff like that.
They were trying to change the way California casts its electoral votes. That’s perfectly legal in itself, and the method of distribution they were proposing is, if I’m not mistaken, already in use by two other states. They were allegedly getting people to sign petitions by stacking them under Save the Trees or whatever. That’s a little dicier, but God knows the first thing you’re supposed to learn is not to sign anything you haven’t read.
It may be that in the coming decades all 50 states overturn the winner-take-all method, which many people have a problem with. Changing California alone would have given the Republicans the advantage for the upcoming election, but by 2012 no doubt other states would have followed suit and any “red” advantage would be diminished, if not gone.
In the meantime, the National Popular Vote movement is working to make presidential elections truly a matter of one person, one vote. Even California’s proposed method distributed votes by district majority, which would still result in “wasted” votes.