I bow to no man in my admiration for political chicanery, and Republican operatives in California have come up with a beaut.
An election lawyer named Thomas Hiltachk is trying to get a proposition placed on the ballot of the state’s primary election to be held next June. The proposition, on which voters would vote yes or no, means to change the way California awards its presidential electoral votes. Right now, California, like all the states, awards its 55 votes on a winner-take-all basis. The proposition would change that, and would award the statewide winner 2 votes, and would then allocate the others based on who wins each of the state’s congressional districts.
In practical terms, this would take the 55 electoral votes that have reliably landed in the Democratic column since 1992 and which will no doubt land there again in 2008, and (if the next election is like recent elections) give 20 or 25 of them to the Republican candidate.
Now, Thomas Hiltachk isn’t the only clever fellow out there. Some Democrats in North Carolina are trying to pull the same trick, although with considerably smaller stakes involved. And there is some apparently obvious appeal to their cause: with a winner-take-all system, you can have very close races, like Florida in 2000, where virtually half the votes cast end up not counting for anything. You end up with elections where candidates end up ignoring a large number of states because the contests there are decided weeks before the election, leaving the candidates to spend all their time in the toss-up states.
But what makes the current system fair is that it’s the system everywhere. There’s something inherently wrong when votes are counted one way in one or some states, and counted differently in the others. Besides, Hiltachk isn’t really proposing a fundamental reform: he just wants to take one winner-take-all election, and turn it into 53 winner-take all elections. It’s hard to see how that’s really more democratic.
The real reform, of course, is to dump the Electoral College entirely. There’s really no reason, in this day and age, why the will of the people needs to be filtered through an ill-understood 18th century invention.
Currently one person has the power to put an end to this sneaky maneuver. If Gov. Schwarzenegger comes ut against it, the effort will wither on the vine. Come on, Arnie. You’ve been getting lots of props for being above the partisan fray. Pull the plug on ths stunt.
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Comments on this entry:
"But what makes the current system fair is that it’s the system everywhere. There’s something inherently wrong when votes are counted one way in one or some states, and counted differently in the others."
Er, sorry, but the way that is being proposed for California in this initiative is in fact the same way that Maine has been doing things since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996. The US constitution allows each State tremendous flexibility in how it chooses to pick its Presidential Electors, so there is no a priori reason that each State should adopt the same winner-take-all model.
If we are not paying in dollars or in peso but now in ameros, than which half of the north southern or central American union pays for whoms welfare state?
If this so call southern union of north America haven't donated no not even one penny for their people's welfare state, than they are more than happy to pay for their own welfare state in Canadian ameros.
I think we should put the boarders right back where it belongs and build a bigger wall to prevent wars.
Now the dollar that is looking the peso is fallen like the peso and guess who is always running but never escapting from east L.A..
They can promote their agenda but what really happening is going the other way. Deficit spending bankrupts but a capitalist society revive the economics.
What is this big fear among the Hefner crowd?