Why Should Californians Fork Over 20 Electoral Votes to the Republicans?
Wealthy right-wingers from out of state are flooding California with cash to try to change the way the state's electoral votes are allocated. In time for the 2008 election (and thereafter) the Republicans want to snatch up at least 20 of California's 55 electoral votes in a new system that would replace the traditional winner-take-all method. As with past Republican shenanigans they intend to accomplish this feat by tricking the voters with a well financed, deceptively-worded ballot initiative.
"Take Initiative America -- California" is a corporation set up in Missouri that is charged with funneling hefty amounts of cash into the coffers of a group calling itself "Californians for Equal Representation." We'll be hearing a lot from "Californians for Equal Representation" on our radios and TVs as the group uses the latest techniques in post-Swift Boat propaganda to convince enough Californians that they should vote in favor of diminishing their state's relevance in national elections.
If successful, the Republican initiative will have the effect of diluting the impact of the state of California on the Electoral College.
This effort flies in the face of the recent "bi-partisan" decision to change the date of the California primary to increase the state's influence in national politics. California Republicans, including the governor, who voted to change the primary schedule should answer the simple question: Why vote to move the primary election up to February 5th in an effort to give the state greater influence in choosing a president while plotting to strip away electoral votes that will weaken the state's influence in presidential elections?
So Republicans can win! That's why!
Making matters worse is the fact that the billionaire vulture capitalist Paul E. Singer, who makes a living extorting money from hard-pressed peasants and workers in Latin America through buying out debt, and who finances every right-wing entity from Commentary magazine to "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," has dumped at least $175,000 into the effort to strip California of 40 percent of its electoral votes. Singer aims to fork over these California electoral votes to his good friend Rudolph Giuliani.
Getting this initiative on the ballot in California is the Republicans' latest trick designed to change the rules of the game in their favor because they can't win otherwise. This "reform" would give Rudy Giuliani or any other person the Republicans nominate a lock on 20 electoral votes from California, which is roughly equal to the total number of electoral votes from Ohio.
If the Republicans succeed it would bifurcate California, divide and conquer it, and reduce its significance in national elections in perpetuity.
Sweet for the Republicans! Terrible for the nation.
It would mean that all of the leadership and innovation that California has provided for the nation in the fields of environmental regulation, family leave and health care legislation, high tech industry, and so on would be blunted and thrown into the maw of national politics along side states like Alabama and Mississippi.
Let's take a moment and review the Republican record of electoral fraud and chicanery in recent years:
In 2000, the Republican National Committee, the George W. Bush campaign, Florida's Governor Jeb Bush and its Secretary of State Katherine Harris, along with their right-wing friends on the Supreme Court, nullified the popular election of a Democratic president.
In 2002, all of Georgia's voters used Diebold touch screen voting machines and both the incumbent Democratic Governor and the incumbent Democratic Senator, who had been well ahead in the polls just before the election, lost in amazing double-digit voting shifts.
In 2003, California Republicans successfully forced a recall election that nullified the reelection of an incumbent Democratic governor. They did so through chicanery and running as their candidate an international mega-movie star whose name everyone on the planet knew. (A regular Republican politician could have never unseated the Democratic incumbent).
In 2004, the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio Kenneth Blackwell made sure that voters in heavily Democratic districts waited in long lines to vote, (in some cases voters waited for ten hours), and touch screen voting machines produced "glitches" that always favored Bush. There is overwhelming evidence that Republican trickery in Ohio nullified the election of a Democratic president. (See Mark Crispin Miller's book, Fooled Again).
In 2005, California's Republican governor ordered a "special election." He claimed the Golden State was in a state of "emergency," (sort of like those Enron-inspired rolling black outs), and six Republican ballot initiatives were so crucial they could not wait until the election of 2006. The Republicans spent heavily to place on the ballot a series of deceptively worded propositions that were an assault on California's working middle class. These propositions, if passed, would have forced labor union membership to plummet, privatized the public pension system CalPIRS, forced teens to notify parents about their reproductive choices, and other regressive measures.
At that the time, the Republicans were riding high. Bush had new "political capital" from the 2004 election and he was trying to privatize Social Security. The Republicans still controlled both houses of Congress. Luckily, California voters did not fall for the Republican trick in 2005 and soundly rejected all of the party's phony initiatives. (The governor then backed off and started to talk like a Democrat in preparation for his reelection bid. He discovered something called "post-partisanship" only after he failed to vanquish the Democrats' labor union base as a force in state politics.)
In 2006, the Democrats miraculously squeaked by in the mid-term elections despite Republican voter suppression tactics in Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere, and gerrymandering in Texas. The Democrats' margin of victory was abnormally low given the pre-election polls, and if it were not for Tom DeLay's conspiracy with Texas Republicans to illegally gerrymander districts in that state the Democrats could have picked up five more House seats.
Now, in 2008, the Republicans are looking to shove one of their own into the White House by rigging the Electoral College in California in their favor because they cannot run on the merits of their horrific record.
In recent years Republicans have subverted our own elections through fraud, Swift Boat attacks, spurious federal prosecutions, voter suppression, illegal campaign donations, bizarre Supreme Court rulings, rigged voting machines, and gerrymandering. But that doesn't stop these hypocrites from claiming that their love of "democracy" runs so deep that we must send Americans to die and be maimed and bankrupt the nation in the name of spreading "democracy" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the world.
The corporate media have gone to great lengths to try to make voters forget that from January 2003 to January 2007 the Republican Party controlled the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. We had a one-party state under Republican power and the nation suffered terribly as a result. We went from peace and prosperity to war and insolvency.
Today, pundits and commentators from Lou Dobbs to Jim Lehrer, from CNN's Cafferty to the highly educated guests on the Charlie Rose show, all talk about the mess in Washington and the partisanship as if the Democrats are equally to blame as the Republicans.
Ask yourself this question: What would be the media's response if the Democrats in the Senate when they were in the minority abused the filibuster in the same exact way the Republicans are currently abusing it? Would pundits and commentators blithely conclude as Carl Hulse and others do today regarding the Republicans, that under Bill Frist the majority simply could not meet the "60-vote threshold" in the Senate to overrule the Democratic minority? As Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out the media have been covering the Senate as if the onus is on Harry Reid to secure 60 votes to send bills to the president.
They should be calling it what it is: Republican obstructionism.
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And what is the Democratic Party doing about this horror??????
Outpopulated by Dem havenots, Reps long ago decided that since rich Cons who don't wanna pay taxes are becoming a demographic minority, they have to cheat in the elections to win.
If elections don't mean anything because of NeoCon fascism, then the US is doomed. How long can the party of selfishness and greed last when they don't have enough kids to vote?
See Joseph A. Palermo's Profile
Moreover, I'm going on paid Paternity Leave for 6 weeks soon -- do you think the Terminator would have signed that piece of legislation? Davis on a bad day is still better than this overblown muscle man Republican Austrian dolt sitting in office today.
See Joseph A. Palermo's Profile
First, Gray Davis would have been able to fight off a recall if he weren't running against a former Mr. Universe and Mega-star -- unless you think Gary Coleman or Mary Cary could have beaten him too. I would have loved to see the Republicans run Lundgren or someone against the incumbent Democrat, good luck. Second, as the tapes from Washington state show, Enron, Lucent, Duke and other "energy" companies created the "energy crisis" to rake in millions from ordinary California rate payers -- Bush's FERC sat on its hands while California went dark -- it really wasn't Davis's fault, although many state Democrats are equally to blame surely for voting for such an ill-conceived "de-regulation," which Republicans love -- (I'll never forget seeing Jeffrey Skilling testify before Congress calling for great regulations as a way to stave off future Enrons, now that was rich!). Also, I'm not defending the Electoral College at all -- I'm just criticizing out of state money coming in to strip electoral votes from California. Arthur Schlesinger had a great idea about the Electoral College that would not require a Constitutional Amendment: By act of Congress (if possible) the law would state that who ever won the popular vote would be awarded an additional 100 Electoral Votes -- done! Then the popular vote winner would always win the Electoral College too. Gray Davis was not popular, but can you imagine the Republican response if the Democrats spent millions on gathering signatures to recall Pete Wilson and then ran Barbara Streisand as their candidate? The Republicans would be blue in the face with outrage -- of course, with their hypocrisy, it's perfectly fine for them to run the Terminator to nullify a real election. Phooey!
2 comments
1st, Constitution says electors are to be appointed by legislature, a state referendum cannot override U.S. Constitution.
2nd, Congressional Districts are gerrymandered throughout the country. If all states did this, essentially, our national elections would be based on the gerrymandering of the 10 year census. Each district's votes would essentially be decided. What a great democracy.
Sure this is a cheap power grab by Republicans which the voters are gong to overwhelmingly reject anyway.
However, I would have a lot more sympathy for the Democrats if they would campaign for the abolition of the immoral and antiquated Electoral College which was created not so the Presidential Candidates will campaign in small states, but so that less populous, i.e. "slave" states of the time would have a veto power of the Presidency.
But the Civil War is over. It shouldn't be about "States" anyway, but empowering the American People.
We need a direct popular vote election in November, with a runoff election if no one gets 50% of the vote.
No more having citizens in "swing" states having more attention than other states or smaller states getting more say because the ratio of elector to population is so much smaller.
This also should be extended to the primary season where we have one national primary day where every vote counts EQUALLY. No more of this rubbish of letting states like Iowa and New Hampshire with an inflated sense of entitlement go first.
If the Democrats campaigned for electoral equality, then I'd care to listen to what they have to say. Both major parties try to rig the system on their behalf.
One way to move toward direct popular vote is to support the campaign for states to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner once a the number of states totally an electoral vote majority does the same.
It's the first step towards abolishing this immoral and undemocratic institution.
One would have thought after Team Bush in Florida was allowed to steal the Presidency from the American people with the help of the Supreme Court because of this immoral institution, that the Democrats would have been crying to abolish it.
Nah, they just want to rig the system themselves.
Stop the GOP power grab, but end the immoral institution too.
This is pretty much the same initiative that the Dems tried to push on the voters in Colorado that was resoundingly defeated. So the Dems are for it in Colorado and against it here in California?
Despite the theatrical hysterics from the author, this thing isn't on the ballot yet and may not even make it. Once voters are told that this would favor one political party over the other, support for it plummets. Californians take their initiatives seriously and, by and large get it right.
Republicans recalled Gray Davis??? Spare me the totally inaccurate rewriting of California electoral history. There have been 32 attempts to recall the Governor of California. Only one recall ever made it to the ballot--Gray Davis.
The Dems hold a seven point advantage in voter registration in California. There aren't enough Republicans to do anything on their own. And the result? 55.4% of CALIFORNIANS voted to recall Gray Davis. For the Recall, 62.1% of CALIFORNIANS voted for the two leading Republican candidates.
Gray Davis was a worthless bumbling bureaucrat who didn't listen to the wishes of the voters. He made a mess of the energy crisis, increased vehicle registration fees by 200% less than 30 days before the Recall, signed a bill that gave drivers licenses to illegals and had interfered with the Republican primary in 2002. Gray Davis was the only sitting Governor in California history to be recalled and he deserved to be put out on his ass.
Democrats run identical referendums in the 10 largest red states to divide their electoral votes...se
They'll regret f*ckin with us this mid election season.
I've always heard "so goes California - so goes the Nation" or something to that effect. Maybe this time the people of California will not be fooled by the criminal republican element and will stand up and throw the bums out with their electoral initiative.
Then we can all sit back with a sigh of relief and wait for the rest of the country to wise up and follow suit.
So you are against the constitutional right for a state to choose how it appropriates the electoral votes?
On one hand you say that the Republicans "nullified the popular election of a Democratic president" ... and then on the other hand want to preserve the electoral college. Which is it? You can't have both.
And your problem with electronic voting machines ... were caused by the ignorance of Democrats not being able to use a punch ballot system designed by Democrats. You get what you ask for.
They should but they won't. It would require something they seem to have a genetic insufficiency of, intestinal fortitude. Speak truth to power? Nice sentiment, too bad the main stream media didn't get the memo.
I did see an interesting proposal once having to do with ending the electoral college. Each state would partner up with other states having an equal number of electoral college votes but which tended to go the "other way". Then all states in the partnership would switch to proportional distribution of their electoral college votes. At first, the change would be next to nothing but over time the electoral college would become more and more pointless.
Having just CA do it right before a close election is just party win at all costs politics. But there are worthwhile ideas out there that deserve another look I think.
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