California Electoral Vote Change Should Make November Ballot

Although there is still a chance that the Republican-backed plan to tally California's electoral votes by congressional district rather than statewide could make the Golden State primary ballot in June, organizers told us last week that the proposed initiative will, in all likelihood, be on the November general election ballot instead.

"We have until January to submit the 435,000 petition signatures we need to qualify for the June ballot, and we have until March to qualify for November," former Reagan White House political operative Ed Rollins, one of the early movers behind the electoral initiative, told me last week. Rollins, who spoke to me while on his way to Little Rock, Ark., to assume the chairmanship of Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, conceded that "we might be a couple of [thousand] signatures short" for qualification in June. But by March, Rollins said, the electoral vote reform team will have 700,000 signatures-enough to withstand the customary massive disqualifications of signatures and still meet the ballot requirement-and thus qualify for the November ballot.

Rollins' opinion was strongly seconded by Ann Dunsmore, the top fund-raiser for the reform forces. "We haven't submitted any signatures yet because we want to have the 700,000 so we really won't have to worry about disqualifying names," said Dunsmore, whose past fund-raising clients range from Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential race to the Swift Boat Veterans independent expenditure in '04. Dunsmore also told me that the campaign for Electoral vote reform is focused more on the November than the June ballot because "between the holidays and the fires out here, it's been hard to collect signatures lately."

Under the proposed initiative, rather than the current winner-take-all system in for apportioning the Golden State's 55 electoral votes in presidential elections, the votes would be given one apiece to the candidate who carries each of the 53 U.S. House districts and two to the candidate who wins the state. Had such a system (under which Maine and Nebraska now apportion their electoral votes) been in place in 2000, George W. Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California instead of none and there would have been no disputed election with Al Gore that year. To no one's surprise, California Democrats have weighed in strongly against the proposed change, while Republicans have been very supportive. Underscoring the concern of national Democrats about the proposed change, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean jetted to California earlier this year and held a press conference to denounce the move to try to change the electoral-vote tallying.

Noting the committee's success in fundraising during the signature collection process, Dunsmore pointed out that "[California Rep.] Darrell Issa, the state Republican Party and the Lincoln Clubs (countywide organizations of major GOP donors throughout the state) have been the most helpful to us." She did not, however, say anything about whether the Republican National Committee-despite being strapped for cash right now-has offered any future assistance to a change that could well be pivotal to the GOP's capture of the presidency in coming years.

jgizzi@eaglepub.com

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Dec 24, 2007
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