The driving force behind the California scam

September 4, 2007

I’ve been neglectful in writing about the scam to split California’s electoral votes based on congressional districts. In a nutshell, GOP activists in the Golden State have hatched a plan to help steal a presidential election by pushing an innocuous-sounding ballot initiative. If it passes, presidential candidates will win one electoral vote for each of California’s 55 districts. Dems could still win a statewide majority, but without the whole state’s electoral votes, it’s almost impossible for a Democratic candidate to get to 270.

I’ve been waiting for a news peg to mention the scheme, and this is as good as any.

Lawyers behind a California ballot proposal that could benefit the 2008 Republican presidential nominee have ties to a Texas homebuilder who financed attacks on Democrat John Kerry’s Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Charles H. Bell and Thomas Hiltachk’s law firm banked nearly $65,000 in fees from a California-based political committee funded almost solely by Bob J. Perry that targeted Democrats in 2006. Perry, a major Republican donor, contributed nearly $4.5 million to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that made unsubstantiated but damaging attacks on Kerry three years ago.

The Perry-financed committee in California, the Economic Freedom Fund, continued to spend money this year, mostly on legal expenses tied to an ongoing legal dispute in Indiana over phone calls made to voters in 2006. It lists the Sacramento law office’s address as its home and its Web site directs contributions to the firm, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk. In addition, Bell serves as the committee’s treasurer.

As Digby put it, “In case there’s anyone who doubts that this gambit to change California’s electoral college votes is anything but a standard, GOP dirty trick, this should put them to rest…. They really couldn’t be more obvious.”

As far as proponents of this little scheme are concerned, if the measure passes, they’ve successfully pulled off a scam that will deliver the next presidential election to the GOP. If the measure fails, Dems will still have to invest a lot of resources into defending the status quo, resources that could be spent elsewhere. For the right, it’s a win-win.

As for the substance of the idea itself, it’s a very bad idea.

As Jamin Raskin recently explained, “This is very plainly not reform. It is tactical gamesmanship.”

Save us the sermons about fairness on Fox News by carefully disguised “pro-reform” advocates. If this were truly just a fairer way to divide up electoral votes, why didn’t Karl Rove and the highly placed political operatives behind this initiative choose to begin in the states in which they control the legislatures, like Texas, Alabama, or Utah?

I know. Don’t hold your breath.

The NYT editorial board also has some worthwhile thoughts on the matter.

The Electoral College should be abolished, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. A prominent Republican lawyer in California is doing it the wrong way, promoting a sneaky initiative that, in the name of Electoral College reform, would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote comes out. If the initiative passes, it would do serious damage to American democracy. […]

The Electoral College should be done away with, but in the meantime, any reforms should improve the system, not make it worse. If California abandons its winner-take-all rule while red states like Texas do not, it will be hard for a Democratic nominee to assemble an Electoral College majority, even if he or she wins a sizable majority of the popular vote. That appears to be just what the backers of the California idea have in mind.

If voters understand that the initiative is essentially an elaborate dirty trick posing as reform, they are likely to vote against it. But judging by the misleading name of their organization, the initiative’s backers want to fool the public into thinking the change would make elections more fair. They are planning on putting it to a vote in June 2008, an election when there will be few other things on the ballot, and turnout is expected to be extremely low. This bad-faith initiative is yet another example of the ways in which referenda can be used for mischief and a reminder of why they are a bad way to resolve complex public-policy issues.

For the record, I would gladly endorse a system whereby presidents are elected by popular vote. Scrap the electoral college and expand the presidential campaign to every state, not just Ohio and Florida.

That said, there’s no reason to make California — the nation’s largest electoral prize — change the way its votes are distributed while leaving other big states in a winner-take-all system. It’s a transparent sham to rig the results.

If the goal is to make Dems and the left jump through a bunch of hoops just to prevent Swiftboat lawyers from stealing an election, it’s likely to work — opponents of this scheme really will have to work hard to beat it. Early polls suggest California voters actually kind of like the idea (though they have not yet learned about or considered the partisan implications).

For more info, there’s a site devoted to counter-organizing against the scheme. Stay tuned.

Let’s see if the media plays the same “he says she says” game they did with the swiftboaters. I’ll bet they do.

We on the left need to pony up and beat that POS, because the media isn’t going to tell the people what the real deal is.

  • Wouldn’t it be a good idea to start similar initiatives in the states where Republicans currently get a lot of their electoral votes? Or would that make it look like the California initiative had legitimacy?

    Too bad we don’t have shameless hacks with millions of dollars at our disposal. But then why would shameless hack millionaires support the DFH party?

  • About the only way to counter act this idea is to open it up across ALL states, but in particular, the “Red” States…

    Where’s Soros?

  • Anything coming out of Texas these days should be shot and killed, before it can do any harm. The damage those from Texas, and the expansion of Texas state programs to the federal level, has caused this country is remarkable.

  • I have known about this one for a while and I am concerned. California voters can be pretty shrewd if they think an out of state organization is trying to pull a fast one, but this one is clever. I am afraid that it will take some resources to defeat this one because it kind of makes some sense. The problem is that the Electoral College is already balanced to favor small states because they automatically get two votes for their senators. It would indeed be a terrible injustice to target only large blue states, but what does justice have to do with the way these people think?

  • And maybe some contra group can draft a near identical ballot initiative that adds the words (or something similar and a bit more artfully worded): this initiative, if successfully passed, will only begin operation when 90% of the States in the United States pass and implement identicalelectoral college distribution laws.

  • I think we could use this as an opportunity to, at long last, abolish the anachronism of an Electoral College. Like super-majorities required for many school levies (or all things) and raising taxes, and many of the Senate’s peculiar institutions, the Electoral College smacks of distrust of the voters. A mass plebiscite would give our urban centers the power they (and the modern world) deserve, and it would forever banish the hillbillies to the circus tents they used to confine their performances to.

    If people really don’t believe the people should be entrusted with the vote they should form a constitutional monarchy. Much more festive and it often gets the job done more efficiently, while supporting the arts as well. Want to preserve our environment? award it as personal property to the newly created aristocrats, with the right to shoot any poachers who enter. That kind of thing. Very traditional. Family coats of arms. Banners. Feast days.

    If you want democracy, scrap the Electoral College and all that other non-democratic garbage. You’d think the Democratic Party might make that a rallying cause, of course, but you’d be wrong. They’d rather worry about offending any Republicans who are still standing.

  • As for the substance of the idea itself, it’s a very bad idea.

    It’s a very good idea were it to be implemented nationally.

    Dividing up electoral votes by congressional district solves the problem of the popular vote while preserving the intent of electoral college. Maine already does this. If you applied this formula to 2000, Gore would have been the clear winner. If you applied this formula to 2004, Kerry wins by a small margin. The problem is that it has to be implemented in every state, otherwise it tips the scales too heavily in one direction or another.

  • Rolling this thing out in California is shrewd, though duplicitous. Many California voters are fed up with their state’s issues being ignored as one party writes off the state and the other takes it for granted.

    If the Democrats want to defeat this thing then they’d be wise to pour some of the money that they’ve raised here into a serious campaign. If the initiative is packaged in such a way that it takes advantage of California voters’ disenchantment then it just might pass.

  • For the record, I would gladly endorse a system whereby presidents are elected by popular vote

    I am pretty surprised to hear this. For the record, and as a matter of pure voting theory, district-ization (whether by the electoral college system, congressional districts, or combined) in single winner plurality elections is a powerful and effective method of improving a desirable metric known as “voting power” (roughly means the probability any single randomly selected vote will by itself determine the outcome). Districtization also has other tangible benefits (both theoretical and practical), and should not be abandoned lightly.
    Reform of the system is probably much more appropriate: the most important would be to ensure the districts are or optimum size and as uniform in population as possible. Simple abandonment of the winner-take-all at the state elector level would almost completely achieve this (one electoral vote per congressional district, possibly hybridized with 2 statewide electoral districts), and probably be much easier to achieve (i.e. no changes to the US Constitution would be required).
    That said, the California initiative is clearly a sham. A successful reform would require all districts to participate, or it otherwise achieves the opposite of the intended effect: districts effectively before more disproportionate in population.

  • The Consitution of the United States requires that any changes to a state’s allocation of electoral votes be enacted by the state legilature. A referendum is permitted to accomplish the change. Article II, Section I states, in pertinent part, as follows:

    Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress

    It would be nice to defeat the initiative and avoid the resulting litigation but it is not necessary to do so to have all of California’s electoral votes go to the populat vote winner.

  • A referendum is not permitted to accomplish the change.

    Though one might presume the California legislature would ratify any such referendum via legislation, should it pass.

  • What does it take for a similar bill to be placed on the ballot in Texas, or any other “red state” with a lot of electoral votes?

  • Utah is not a good counterexample, by the way … since with only a few House seats, it wouldn’t make much difference there. But the problem is that not many states have an initiative process like California’s. In Texas, I suppose such a change would have to be passed by the Legislature — not a likely prospect!

    Meanwhile, in California there’s the question of when this would go on the ballot — as I recall, the Secretary of State has some leeway on this question, so perhaps it could be put on the November rather than June ballot, which would probably kill it. And as mentioned, a counter-initiative is a tried and true California tactic. Moreover, since the text of the Republic party initiative is known, the counter-initiative could be drawn up to be both attractive to voters and incompatible with the Republic party initiative, so that if both passed, there would be a legal deadlock. But I’m sure clever lawyers and pollsters are hard at work on gaming all these options…since gaming rather than thinking or leading has become the primary mode of political conflict, nowadays.

  • mle:

    Quite right, it was a typo to omit the “not.” A similar situation occurred with regard to the election of Senators. Article I, Section 3 states:

    The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

    An amendment to the Constitution (see the 17th amendment) was needed to provide direct election of senators.

  • Fair Election Reform is the top-level effort to block this dirty trick (run by the same group that was Gray Davis’ team during the recall election). The grassroots effort is at the California Courage Campaign, where we’re raising cash to build a broad-based movement against the Republican power grab. If you could mention that, it’d be great, thanks.

  • Yes, the electoral college should be eliminated and elections should be determined by direct vote when the technical safeguards are adequate. As Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland and California have shown, we are not there yet.

    As an interim measure, the California proposal is not a bad idea – one electoral vote for each congressional district plus two statewide electoral votes for the candidate who gets the most votes statewide. This would mitigate some of the worst features of the winner-take-all system, the aggressive, nasty campaigns, not-completely-slanderous charges and corrupt voting. And it would encourage presidential candidates to wage a real fifty-state campaign instead of concentrating on a few large states with the most electoral votes. Every state has at least one district that could be competitive.

    But it cannot be done one state at a time, beginning with the other party’s states. It’s all at once or not at all. Enough with the swift-boat creeps who have degraded our political environment.

  • why didn’t Karl Rove and the highly placed political operatives behind this initiative choose to begin in the states in which they control the legislatures, like Texas, Alabama, or Utah?

    FWIW, the Dems control the AL Legislature. Not that you would know from what comes out of it.

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  • If people really don’t believe the people should be entrusted with the vote they should form a constitutional monarchy. — Ed Stephan
    The world is not that simple. It’s been said that democracies have the unfortunate effect of giving the people exactly the government they deserve, and after 2004, I’m hesitant to discount that idea.

    It’s a very good idea were it to be implemented nationally. — John S

    one electoral vote for each congressional district plus two statewide electoral votes for the candidate who gets the most votes statewide. This would mitigate some of the worst features of the winner-take-all system — Brownell

    No, no, no, no, no! It’s one of the dumbest reform ideas there is! You know why? Have you seen what districts look like nowadays? If you think gerrymandering is bad now, just imagine how things would turn out if electoral votes were given out on a per-district basis!

    That and such a split would give small states even more power than they already have. You’d only need to win Wyoming’s one district to get its two ‘senatorial’ votes, whereas you’d need to win 10 districts in Pennsylvania to get its two senatorial votes.

  • Anything to keep the Clintons out of the White House!!!

    Enough!! Stop the Royal Two Family System.

    No more Bushes! No More Clintons!

    Less we anguish with eight years of attempted Impeachment on Hillary Clinton
    Followed by eight years of attempted Impeachment of Jeb Bush
    Followed by eight years of attempted Impeachment of Chelsea Clinton
    Followed by eight years of……….

    WAKE UP AMERICA
    END THE MADNESS IN THIS COUNTRY NOW!!

  • California doesn’t have to defeat the whole notion entirely; all that needs to be done is to add the caveat — just like bubba @6 has suggested — that the law kicks in *only* if/when all other states adopt the same system. As a matter of fact, I have a vague memory that at least one state has done that (ie in addition to Maine, which alread assigns its electors that way): the law has been passed but is waiting for other states to join, before it can be implemented.

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  • “GOP activists in the Golden State have hatched a plan to help steal a presidential election by pushing an innocuous-sounding ballot initiative.”

    Typical Rethuglican tactic: if you can’t win – cheat, then lie about it

  • This proposal without a doubt is the most corrupt thing to ever to be associated in American politics…This move is as blatant as anything I’ve ever seen…..

    Democrats must defeat this, no matter the cost….It is nothing but election rigging, plain & simple. end of story…..

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