Karl Rove may have resigned as the President’s chief strategist, but the dirty and secretive tricks that have characterized the Republican Party in recent years are still here to stay. Leading California Republicans are promoting a dishonest initiative that steals electoral votes from California, a democratic state. Republicans attempting to steal votes in a major election? This smells all too familiar.

The initiative, crafted by a lawyer for the California Republican Party and member of the group misleadingly called “Californians for Equal Representation,” proposes to divide California’s electoral votes based on results in each congressional district, rather than award the entire 55 electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Proposed for the California ballot in June 2008, where voter turn-out is extremely low, this initiative would essentially give the next Republican presidential candidate as many as 19 additional votes–almost equal to all the electoral votes from Ohio and nearly all from Florida!

For many voters, this initiative upon first glance seems logical and fair. However, in the context of the rest of the country, where large red states in particular would still award their electoral votes to the candidate who won the popular vote, this ballot initiative is completely imbalanced and undemocratic. There is no way this initiative would create a more fair and balanced voting system in our country, unless it was uniformly adopted by ALL states.

This initiative shines a glaring spotlight on Republican hypocrisy. Republicans want to continue the same winner-take-all system in other big states that they consistently win, like Texas and Indiana. However, they want Democrats to share the electoral votes in California, a big blue state with the country’s most electoral votes. Democrats have been carrying California in recent elections. Even if Democrats were to win the state in 2008, Republicans would still get a substantial number of electoral votes under this new law. 

If passed, this initiative would make a democratic victory in any major election extremely difficult. We can not let the Republican Party pull the wool over our eyes and steal yet another election.

Please visit Californians for Fair Election Reform to sign a petition in support of rejecting the GOPs California electoral power grab:  http://www.fairelectionreform.com/

And visit the Courage Campaign’s web site to sign their petition and learn more about this important issue. http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/content/20for20onActBlue/