Seen in the New York Times blog, “The Caucus”:
An effort to change the way electoral votes are apportioned in California has been stunningly abandoned and left for dead, even though most voters didn’t even know this patient was sick.
The prominent Republican lawyer who authored the initiative – one that proposed altering the system so that electoral votes would be apportioned by Congressional district, giving a local leg up to otherwise disadvantaged Republicans running for president – has resigned from his own campaign. His spokesman has bailed out, too. [...]
But what caused the initiative’s creator, Tom Hiltachk, and its spokesman, Kevin Eckery, to resign, was their dispute with the effort’s largest donor, an organization called “Take Initiative America.” The group was created by Charles A. Hurth III, a Missouri lawyer and a Giuliani donor, just one day before Mr. Hiltachk received a $175,000 check from the group to help finance the cause.
But when Mr. Hiltachk could not learn the names of the individual donors to the organization, he declared the effort more or less undermined, and quit.
You know, this tactic to deflate California’s electoral importance was sneaky. And, considering the implications if it succeeded, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an interesting cast of characters drawn into funding the campaign.
Of course, then there’s this little addendum to the post:
postscript: The New York Daily News reported on its political blog that Mr. Giuliani’s top fundraiser, Paul Singer, told the paper that he was the sole financial backer of the initiative. Mr. Singer is a member of the national finance committee on the Giuliani campaign.
Very interesting indeed.
1 response so far ↓
1 John Koza // 1 Oct 2007 at 9:23 am
As long as 70% of the people disapprove of the current system of electing the President, proposals to divide electoral votes by congressional district (or proportionally) will continue to pop up in states selected for partisan reasons.
A national popular vote is the way to make every person’s vote equal, and to guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill would not take effect piecemeal, but only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill is enacted in a group of states possessing 270 or more electoral votes, all of the electoral votes from those states would be awarded, as a bloc, to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill has 364 legislative sponsors in 47 states. It has been signed into law in Maryland. Since its introduction in February 2006, the bill has passed by 11 legislative houses (one house in Colorado, Arkansas, and North Carolina, and two houses in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and California).