A lot going on for a Tuesday in August.  Dan Morain at the LAT has the latest story:

Democrats proposed an initiative today aimed at having California embrace the movement to elect presidents by popular vote.

The initiative also is designed to head off a Republican effort to wrest away California’s electoral votes. Republican consultants are proposing a separate initiative to change California’s winner-take-all system of awarding its 55 electoral votes. Under the Republican measure, electoral votes would be awarded based on how congressional districts vote, an idea that could benefit the Republican nominee.

If the competing Democratic and Republican measures make it to the ballot next June, California would become a battleground over the electoral college system. The state has 55 electoral votes, more than any other state, and more than 10% of the 538 electoral votes nationally.

Chris Lehane announced the competing initiative at a press conference today.  And the initiative has been filed with the Attorney General.

I should add that there was another poll out today on this issue, by Rasmussen, which showed that the right-wing Electoral College power grab fails badly once people are given information about it’s implications, but that polling on a national popular vote concept is pretty favorable.  Numbers on the flip:

The proposal being pitched in California would award one Electoral Vote to the winner of each Congressional District along with two Electoral Votes for the statewide winner. In a theoretical sense, 45% of voters nationwide think that’s a good idea. Thirty percent (30%) disagree while 25% are not sure. However, even that tepid level of support dissipates when voters learn that a change in California could significantly increase the number of Republican Electoral Votes. Once that is factored into the equation, support drops to 31% and opposition increases to 43%.

It’s interesting to note that Republican support for the measure barely increases when told of the potential benefit to their own party. That may be due to a sense of fairness or a nagging realization that the same thing could happen in other states where the GOP would lose votes. Forty-five percent (45%) favor the concept in theory and 48% favor it after learning how it would impact the results in California. Among Democrats and unaffiliated voters, support plunges dramatically once the electoral implications of a change in California are explained.
Overall, 54% of voters would like to get rid of the Electoral College and have the winner of the popular vote become President. Thirty percent (30%) disagree. Democrats strongly support this approach while Republicans are evenly divided. Women are more enthusiastic about it than men.

I’ve been advocating for the National Popular Vote plan for some time.  If the Electoral College were enacted after the 14th Amendment, it would be found unconstitutional.  Every election in our system is majority-rule except for the one for the highest office in the land.  Californians are disenfranchised every year as they watch small states like Wyoming get an outsized portion of the electoral vote.

The GOP spin was predictable:

Kevin Eckery, spokesman for the GOP measure, said the Democratic-backed measure would leave Californians with little or no voice in national politics.

“If you ignore the congressional districts, there would be one big overwhelming national vote,” Eckery said. “What matters in L.A. or what matters in Santa Monica, won’t matter. It will be just one vote thrown into the mix.”

Um, what’s wrong with one big overwhelming national vote for a national office?  And did what matters in Santa Monica and LA matter in 2004?  2000?  1988?  That’s a ridiculous argument.

This is getting very, very interesting.

(now available in orange)
Brian has the press release, but WIRED brings us a few more intriguing details about the machines ES&S sold a group of counties before they were certified.  First of all, there were 1,000 machines sold to San Francisco, Marin, Solano, Merced and Marin.  The law allows the state to fine the company up to $10,000 per uncertified system ($9.72m) and refund the counties all or part of the purchase price, which would amount to about $5 million.  Plus, the state could ban ES&S from doing any business with the state.  That could effect up to 14 more counties, including LA County.

It turns out that ES&S may have been faking certification stickers on the back of the machines, the image is from the WIRED article.

The AutoMark A100 was certified for use in California in August 2005. However, in 2006, ES&S, by its own admission, sold 1,000 units of its subsequent AutoMark model — the A200 version — to five CA counties months before the system passed federal qualification testing in August 2006. Voting machines generally undergo two stages of testing and certification, first by independent testing labs overseen by the federal government and then by the states themselves. But according to secretary of state spokeswoman Nicole Winger ES&S still has not submitted the A200 system to the state to examine and certify.

Winger also says that the A200 machines had stickers on them (see photo below) that identified them as having passed federal qualification testing, when they hadn’t yet passed that testing. Winger says that the qualification stickers that were placed on the A200 machines were the stickers that are supposed to apply only to A100 machines. Winger says it’s possible that the stickers were applied in error. But if ES&S deliberately placed the stickers on the machines it could suggest a deliberate attempt on the part of the company to deceive California election officials.

“We are in the early stages of learning about the facts,” Winger told me. “We don’t know who would have applied the A100 stickers to uncertified equipment.”

Winger said the differences between the A100 and A200 systems are significant and easily identified just through visual inspection (see the photos above at right). The size of the motherboard and the types of wiring inside the machines are just two examples of the differences.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen will be addressing this and other questions at the hearing on September 20th.  I feel confident in saying that if her predecessor had been in office this would have never been uncovered.  Indeed, this happened under his watch.