Dirty pool or fair game? A GOP power-player in California may have found a way to ensure--or at least greatly boost the chances for--a GOP win in 2008. I'm not sure which way to feel about this one. Obviously, I think a GOP win next time is, to say the least, the wrong way to go. And I think this play smells a bit of desperation. Read on, and see what you think.
[Excerpt]
Votescam
by Hendrik Hertzberg
August 6, 2007
Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union. [snip]
Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that’s just a letterhead—there’s no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm’s managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s personal lawyer for election matters. Hiltachk and his firm have been involved in many well-financed ballot initiatives before, including the recall that put Arnold in Sacramento. . . .
Read on at: NewYorker.com
Ah!...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the People's Republic of California. I find the initiative utterly stupid but that's what they generally do out there. If it were anywhere else I'd be concerned.
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