Sunday, August 19, 2007

Florida in 2000. Ohio in 2004. California in 2008?

From the folks that brought you the 2003 Recall election, now comes their latest endevor. It is an attempt to reallocate some 20 of California's 55 electoral votes to next year's GOP nominee.

Here is how it works. Quite simply their plan is to place an iniative on the ballot for next June's election. If the iniative passes ... WhamO! Califorinia's winner-take-all system of adwarding of its electoral votes, gets replaced by a new system for awarding electoral votes based on the vote for each of the state's 53 CDs and the remaining 2 electoral votes awarded to the overall winner of the statewide popular vote. How does that sound?

Great ... especially, when you consider that George Bush lost California by over 2 million votes to Al Gore and then as a "wartime president" turned around lost California a second time to John Kerry by 1.2 million. Why try and nominate a candidate that would appeal to a majority of Californians? When you can rely on good 'ol malapportionment to do part of the job for you.

It is bad enough that California has only 55 electoral votes, when you consider that its population is approximately equal to the following states: Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Arkansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, which together have 101 electoral votes.

I guess this is what the modern GOP has come to. If you can't disenfranchise voters (i.e. Florida 2000), or rigged the election (i.e. Ohio 2004), then their is always the tried and true way of malapportionment. Well at least we have done away with the 3/5s rule.

1 comment:

Jon Timmons said...

You notice the initiative doesn't say that it should be by the percentage of votes received, but rather breaks it up by a gerrymandered congressional district system.