November 03, 2007

"New Life for Initiative to Apportion Electoral Vote"

"Republican donors are pumping new life into a proposed ballot initiative, considered all but dead by Democrats a month ago, that would alter the way electoral votes are apportioned in California to the benefit of Republican presidential candidates.

Though the financing remains uncertain, the measure’s leaders said Friday that they were confident they would get the signatures required by the Nov. 29 deadline to qualify the initiative for a statewide vote next June. The effort, begun in the summer by a prominent Republican lawyer, lay in peril in October after its top proponents quit over questions about its financing.

Last week, a new organization began raising the roughly $2 million thought to be needed to get the initiative on the ballot. The new effort is being spearheaded by David Gilliard, a Republican consultant in Sacramento, aided by Anne Dunsmore, a prolific fund-raiser who recently resigned from the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“You can’t just fold up every time somebody says they killed you,” Ms. Dunsmore, in a telephone interview, said of the effort to resuscitate the initiative.

The initiative would ask voters to replace California’s winner-take-all system of allocating its 55 electoral college votes with one that parses the votes by Congressional district. It has attracted strong opposition from Democrats because it would transform California from a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections by handing the Republican nominee roughly 20 votes from safe Republican districts.

If the initiative qualifies for the ballot, Art Torres, the head of the California Democratic Party, has promised a constitutional challenge, arguing that only state legislatures can determine how electoral votes are allocated."

Posted by Randy Riddle at November 3, 2007 10:04 AM