The New York Times
Saturday 03 November 2007
Los Angeles - Republican donors are pumping new life into a proposed ballot initiative, considered all but dead by Democrats a month ago, that would alter the way electoral votes are apportioned in California to the benefit of Republican presidential candidates.
Though the financing remains uncertain, the measure's leaders said Friday that they were confident they would get the signatures required by the Nov. 29 deadline to qualify the initiative for a statewide vote next June. The effort, begun in the summer by a prominent Republican lawyer, lay in peril in October after its top proponents quit over questions about its financing.
Last week, a new organization began raising the roughly $2 million thought to be needed to get the initiative on the ballot. The new effort is being spearheaded by David Gilliard, a Republican consultant in Sacramento, aided by Anne Dunsmore, a prolific fund-raiser who recently resigned from the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani.
"You can't just fold up every time somebody says they killed you," Ms. Dunsmore, in a telephone interview, said of the effort to resuscitate the initiative.
The initiative would ask voters to replace California's winner-take-all system of allocating its 55 electoral college votes with one that parses the votes by Congressional district. It has attracted strong opposition from Democrats because it would transform California from a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections by handing the Republican nominee roughly 20 votes from safe Republican districts.
If the initiative qualifies for the ballot, Art Torres, the head of the California Democratic Party, has promised a constitutional challenge, arguing that only state legislatures can determine how electoral votes are allocated.
Under state law, backers of the initiative must collect the signatures of roughly 400,000 registered voters; supporters said they intended to collect 675,000 signatures to make sure enough of them actually qualified.
"At the pace we're on, I think we'll be done mid-November," said Michael Arno, who is leading a professional signature-gathering effort.
"I have 300,000 signatures in hand and 100,000 in the pipeline," Mr. Arno said, adding that he believed another 100,000 might have been gathered by others.
The group is behind, however, in raising the money needed to pay the signature gatherers and finish the process.
Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from San Diego whose donations helped qualify a recall vote against Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, has written a $50,000 check. Mr. Issa said Friday that other Republicans had given "far more," though the group had not disclosed its donors.
"I'm encouraging others to give generously," Mr. Issa said. "I think $50,000 is a fair amount for a person to give."
How much money is needed is a tricky question. For now, the group is paying signature gatherers $3.75 a signature, but Mr. Arno has agreed to take less for now to conserve cash.
The initiative began under the aegis of Thomas W. Hiltachk, a lawyer and a Republican. Mr. Hiltachk quit in September after it was revealed that the effort's only donation at the time had come from a top fund-raiser for Mr. Giuliani, Paul E. Singer, via a remote group in Missouri run by a lawyer, Charles A. Hurth III, who had also donated to Mr. Giuliani's presidential campaign.
Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant, helped by Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, and some elected officials, steamrolled the earlier effort with a relentless campaign that included complaints to federal agencies about the connections between the Giuliani donors and the initiative.
Suggesting that June was still a realistic goal for a statewide vote, Ms. Dunsmore said: "You've got to try. You never know. Time is the impediment."
Legal Challenge on Electoral Change
By Kevin Yamamura
The Sacramento Bee
Friday 02 November 2007
Democrats say initiative violates US Constitution and vow a suit to fight it.
California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres vowed Thursday to challenge a proposed initiative to change how the state's electoral votes are counted if it qualifies for the ballot.
Torres insisted the initiative would be illegal because the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the power to determine their presidential electors. The proposal being circulated by Republican consultants would assign California's electors on a district-by-district basis rather than award the statewide winner all 55 electoral votes.
"(The Constitution) states very unequivocally in my mind that the state legislatures determine how electoral votes are counted, not the people or an initiative process, which is not even mentioned when the framers wrote the Constitution," Torres said. "That has never been tested from what I can tell. We plan to test it."
Democrats have charged that the initiative is a ploy to ensure Republicans obtain 20 or more electoral votes next year in California, a state that no GOP presidential candidate has won since George H.W. Bush in 1988. But Republicans behind the initiative said it would force presidential candidates to visit California more often and give GOP voters here more say in the presidential outcome.
Dave Gilliard, a Republican consultant spearheading the initiative effort, said he believes the ballot proposal is constitutional.
"The lawyers who looked at it for us think it's perfectly fine in California because under our initiative process, basically the people are the Legislature," Gilliard said. "We're not worried about that."
Only two other states, Maine and Nebraska, allocate electoral votes by district. In both cases, state legislatures passed the change.
Richard L. Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School Los Angeles, said there is no clear answer as to whether the California initiative is constitutional.
He said that if the Constitution's reference to state legislatures is literally interpreted as applying only to legislatures, the initiative would not be legal. But if the Constitution is interpreted as referring to legislative powers - which California gives to the initiative process - then it would be legal.
"It is an exceedingly difficult constitutional question," Hasen said. "There are arguments on both sides, and it's not clear how the courts will resolve it. ... The bottom line is, this is not an easy question. For Democrats to say, of course this isn't constitutional, and for Republicans to say, of course this is constitutional, is just spin."
Torres spoke Thursday at a Capitol news conference in which he raised questions about signature-gathering techniques used by Arno Political Consultants, the Sacramento-based firm working for Gilliard. Torres was joined by Kristina Wilfore, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a national group backed partly by labor unions that released a 63-page report Thursday accusing Arno of past petition abuses.
Wilfore and Torres have asked Attorney General Jerry Brown to scrutinize Arno's methods. Brown's office did not return a call Thursday. Torres said the Democratic Party fielded complaints last week that petitioners tried to fool voters into signing the Electoral College initiative, a misdemeanor under state law.
Michael Arno, the firm's president, denied wrongdoing and said his firm is not under investigation in California or any other state. He also said BISC's report was politically calculated.
"The allegations made by this partisan organization are unfounded and are being made to score political points and done with malice," Arno said in a statement.
Initiative proponents need about 700,000 signatures to have confidence their proposal will qualify for the ballot.
They can use 100,000 signatures collected from a previous effort that disbanded in September. Arno estimated that proponents collected 150,000 signatures last week and expect to collect more than that this week.
Arno acknowledged Thursday he made an "adjustment" Wednesday to slow down petition gatherers because the signatures are coming in faster than expected.
Gilliard said he and Arno agreed to lower the price paid per signature to conserve money for now.
"The funds are coming in at the pace we thought they would, but the signatures are coming in faster," Gilliard said.
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