By Brian Leubitz

Gov. Brown just signed AB 459, Jerry Hill’s bill to join the national popular vote compact:

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation this morning committing California to an interstate compact to award electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.

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For too long, presidential candidates have ignored California and our issues while pandering exclusively to the battleground states,” the bill’s author, Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said in a written statement. “A national popular vote will force candidates to actually campaign in California and talk about our issues.” (SacBee)

Basically, the Compact would become effective when enough votes in the electoral college are bound by the compact.  Before today’s signature, 8 states and DC signed up for 74 votes committed, California’s 55 gives a total of 129.  If the remaining 142 votes commit, we could be looking a vastly different political landscape.

Remember back to 2007.  It was the days of George W. Bush, and you had your mullet. Well, maybe not the mullet, but there were some serious Republican Dirty Tricks going on.  In the continuing effort to a) steal power for the Republicans and b) do some seriously dirty tricks, right-wing initiative filer extraordinaire Ted Costa has brought back the Dirty Tricks Initiative.  He filed it with the AG’s office last week. More from Dan Morain:

With no fanfare, Costa last week submitted to the attorney general’s office an initiative he calls the “Electoral College Reform Act.” On its face, the populist proposal would play to voters’ sense of fairness and desire for competition among candidates.

In reality, this initiative would be a Republican power grab with national implications. The change contemplated by Costa and other consultants could push a Republican to victory in a close presidential race.

“It is the kind of thing that puts the metal to the grindstone and sparks fly,” Costa told me.

Under the proposal, California’s 55 electoral votes no longer would go to whoever wins the popular vote. Rather, they’d be apportioned based on the candidate who wins in particular congressional districts(SacBee)

Here’s the thing. Costa loves to put these initiatives out there, and see what he gets.  Normally, it’s nothing.  But on occasion, see the 2003 recall, he catches lightning in a bottle and he’s off to the races.  The scarier part is that if President Obama doesn’t have any challengers in the primary, we are looking at a very Republican electorate in the presidential primary.

It could be something of a perfect storm, if Costa can get Darrell Issa or some other rich Republican to fund this one.  It was a nightmare last time, and it will be a nightmare again.  If the Republicans take 15-20 electoral college votes from California, it becomes extremely difficult to challenge them.  

At this point, there is a long way to go, but if it does grow, we’ll need to rally again to kill the Dirty Tricks once again.

In 2007, right-wing political operatives tried to place a measure on the June 2008 ballot that – if successful – would have awarded California’s electoral votes by Congressional District.  Democrats and progressives strongly opposed it, because everyone assumed it would give the G.O.P. presidential nominee an extra 19 votes.  California is a deep blue state, but parts of Orange County and the Central Valley are still reliably Republican.  New data from last November’s election, however, suggests that “Red California” is becoming less and less relevant.  Barack Obama carried eight Congressional Districts that had long voted for Republican presidential candidates, and John McCain came close to losing three more.  All these districts are currently represented in Congress by Republicans, but a few incumbents came close last year to losing to Democratic challengers.  It’s only a matter of time before some of these districts will eventually flip.  None of this is a surprise, however, because the state’s Republican base is older, whiter and shrinking in size.  But the rate of this change is quite staggering, which explains why Republicans in the state legislature have clung to the “two-thirds rule” for passing a budget.  After all, it’s the only reason they have any power left in the state.

Thanks to the work of bloggers at the Swing State Project, it is now possible to quickly check the results of the last presidential election by Congressional District, and compare it with 2000 and 2004.  Congressional Quarterly even has a cool map that you can look at online.  What it shows for the future of California Republicans is not pretty.  None of us were surprised that Barack Obama won the Golden State by a 60-40 margin.  But the bigger story here is that “Red California” has become far less Republican.

Take the 24th Congressional District, which includes Ventura County and inland parts of Santa Barbara County.  The District is home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, the same town where an all-white jury voted in 1992 to acquit the cops who beat up Rodney King.  Republican Elton Gallegy has been the Congressman there for 22 years, and he’s never had to deal with a tough challenger.  In fact, the lines were drawn to intentionally give him a safe seat.  But Obama won the District by a three-point margin.

Or how about the 48th District in Orange County – which includes Irvine, Laguna Hills and the mansions of Newport Beach?  George Bush carried the District by a 20-point margin in both elections, but Obama won it by over 2,600 votes.  Republican Chris Cox represented the District for years, and when he stepped down in 2005 successfully passed it on to a GOP successor.  Democrats tried in 2006 and 2008, but Congressman John Campbell has so far managed to ward them off.  Now, Irvine City Councilwoman Betty Krom has thrown her hat in the ring – and her campaign kick-off featured Loretta Sanchez.

When you look at the map, the most obvious change is the 25th District – which hugs a huge section of the Nevada border and includes Death Valley, before heading south to include parts of northern Los Angeles County.  The City of Palmdale, home of the late anti-gay bigot Pete Knight is in the District.  It’s always been a safe district for Republican candidates, but Obama managed to win it by a percentage point.  Mormon Congressman Buck McKeon has had the seat since 1992, and has never had to worry about Democrats.  That could change …

But can a candidate like Obama give “coat-tails” for Democrats in Red California?  Ask Dan Lungren and Ken Calvert, two Republican members of Congress.  When Lungren – the GOP’s losing candidate for Governor in 1998 – moved to the Sacramento suburbs to stage a political comeback, he decided to settle in a safe Republican district.  Calvert has represented Riverside and Corona since 1992, and even survived a prostitution scandal early in his career to get re-elected – because the District at the time was so Republican.

For Lungren and Calvert, the state’s demographics are catching up with them.  Obama won both of their districts, and both of them came extremely close to losing their jobs in November – when spirited Democratic challengers took them on.  Both districts have had an influx of suburban sprawl, and now the headache of foreclosures has hit their communities hard.  We’re seeing similar trends in Districts 26 in northern Los Angeles (Dave Dreier), 45 in Palm Springs (Mary Bono) and 50 in San Diego (Brian Bilbray.)  Obama won all of these districts, and a strong Democratic challenger could benefit.

Granted, California still has Republican parts – and progressives were right to defeat the so-called Dirty Tricks Initiative to split up electoral votes by Congressional District.  I have never liked the Electoral College’s “winner-take-all” system – where a state awards all of its electoral votes to the plurality winner.  But until every state splits up their votes to ensure that every minority (not just California Republicans) has a voice in picking our next President, it is unfair and undemocratic.

John McCain won 11 out of California’s 53 Congressional Districts – which means that Republicans in the Golden State are still red, but not dead.  But in three of them – George Radanovich’s 19th in Fresno, Ed Royce’s 40th in Orange County and Dana Rohrabacher’s 46th in Palos Verdes – the margin was surprisingly close.  As the party keeps pandering to its Southern base, it will drift into oblivion in California.  And if a measure to abolish the “two-thirds rule” in the state legislature passes, it will mean the death of the California GOP.

Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of BeyondChron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published.

No, not dead, just delayed.  They kept pushing their luck on turning in the signatures and now have conceded that they will not make the June ballot.  (Got this via email, but Meyer’s blog has technical problems, will update with link later)

The initiative to change how California’s Electoral College votes are awarded in the race for the White House will not appear on the June statewide ballot, according to campaign officials.

In a brief statement e-mailed to reporters this afternoon, the California Counts political team said they are now shooting for the November ballot after being unable to gather enough signatures in time for this week’s drop-dead June deadline.

“Due to the tight calendar we are operating under and the challenge of raising money and gathering signatures during the Holiday season,” says the statement, “we understand that submitting signatures and having them counted in time to make the June ballot, is no longer a realistic goal.”

They are now shooting for the November ballot.  However, like Meyers notes that there are two major problems with that strategy.  1) The turnout will not be as favorable for the Republicans as it would have been in June.  2) If it were to pass there would be a court challenge over whether it would count for the election occurring on the same day.

We have killed it twice now and we will for a third time if necessary.

[UPDATE] 3:20 pm Here is the SacBee breaking story that has a crucial piece of information:

California Counts has until Feb. 4 to submit their signatures, a deadline representing six months after the initiative was approved for circulation. Gilliard’s statement said his group had collected more than 500,000 signatures; political strategists believe they need about 700,000 to ensure they have enough valid ones to meet a state threshold.

“CalCounts will continue with its fundraising and signature drive because we believe Californians deserve the right to vote on this important initiative to reform the Electoral College and to make our state count again in presidential elections,” Gilliard said in the statement.

There has been a lot of confusion over when the dirty tricksters needed to turn in their signatures.  The hard deadline was Feb 5th, but that is also when they need to be certified by, so they obviously had to turn them in before then.  The County Registrars need time to do the random counts and if that failed, to do a full count.

They are busy preparing for the primary, thus can’t be devoting a lot of resources to a count.  The dirty tricksters pushed it so far that it is now impossible to get certified in time for the June primary.  But if they get the 200,000 more in by February, it will make the November ballot.

Buried inside this Politico article about Rudy Giuliani’s many ties to the Dirty Tricks initiative is this nugget:

There are actually two potential ballot initiatives. One would allocate California’s Electoral College votes proportionally, as opposed to the current winner-take-all format. The other affects redistricting.

Where they connect? California Republican Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin O. McCarthy have asked the Federal Election Commission for a legal opinion on whether they can raise unlimited donations to help the redistricting initiative. But a money-and-politics watchdog group argues that would blow a hole in the 2002 campaign finance reform law that bans federal officeholders from soliciting such big checks – and pave the way for presidential contenders to urge their supporters to shovel money into the proposed Electoral College initiative.

Nunes and McCarthy may be the safest two GoOPers in the state.  They are acting as the battering rams to knock down the walls of campaign finance reform, not just for the Dirty Tricks initiative but a whole host of pernicious ballot measures.

In a way, they’re trying to retroactively immunize people like Rudy and Darrell Issa for their already-questionable efforts.  It’s just a hop, skip and a jump from soliciting for signatures, which both campaigns have done, to soliciting for money.

As for the bait and switch techniques being employed to gather signatures, there’s going to be a LOT more on this to come.

(An interesting personal account of the dirty tricks. – promoted by shayera)

NOTE: cross-posted from DailyKos.

First, I should explain that I’m a graduate student at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Today I witnessed what I think is an incidence of ballot petition fraud relating to the electoral vote apportionment initiative – the proposal to apportion California’s electoral votes by congressional district, unilaterally giving 19 of California’s electoral votes to the Republicans in 2008.

Outside the UCEN (student center plus bookstore plus food court) at UC Santa Barbara, there were a number of people with cardboard clipboards soliciting people to sign ballot petitions for a proposal to spend $1 billion on cancer hospitals for kids. If you agree to sign, they tell you “you need to sign 4 times.” What they do not tell you is that the three pages after the ballot initiative on cancer hospitals are different ballot initiatives: the second proposes to abolish eminent domain, the third proposals to abolish rent control, and the fourth is the proposal to apportion California’s electoral votes by district (the so-called Dirty Tricks Initiative).

I should note that the clipboard is arranged such that a rubber band holding the petitions to the cardboard is positioned on the top of the page, across the actual ballot language in question – thus, partially hiding the text of the ballot initiatives on pages 2-4 unless you actually stop and pull down the top of the page.

I agreed to sign the cancer initiative, but the comment about signing four times raised a red flag, because I’m familiar with the structure of ballot petitions, so I paused before signing and looked at the other initiatives. However, I’m absolutely sure that most of the people signing, young college students on a rush to get their lunches and off to class, did not take this step.

What they are doing is getting people to sign for ballot initiatives without their knowledge or informed consent, using young peoples’ desire to do a good thing and their lack of familiarity with the legal paperwork of initiative petitions. If this is not illegal it is certainly deeply unethical. The moment I realized what was going on, I told the petitioners that they shouldn’t be telling people to sign for ballot initiatives they’re not aware of. Immediately after, I called the school newspaper, the Daily Nexus, the Courage Campaign, the Santa Barbara Democratic Central Committee, and the California Democratic Party. After that, I have sent in a form to the Sec. of State as well, reporting this.

I’m posting this to further get the word out.