Obi-J

Democracy certainly offers a far better system of government compared to more totalitarian systems as it’s participatory and provides a voice for it’s citizens. However, I find it troubling, if not disgusting, that those who preach its benefits and wish to spread it across the world are attempting to pass legislation to undermine the system for the benefit of themselves.

Specifically,

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.

and who’s behind all this…

Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that’s just a letterhead—there’s no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm’s managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s personal lawyer for election matters. Hiltachk and his firm have been involved in many well-financed ballot initiatives before, including the recall that put Arnold in Sacramento. They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like—the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act of 2006, for example. It would have raised the state minimum wage slightly—by a lesser amount than it has since been raised—and, in the fine print, would have made it impossible ever to raise it again except by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, while, for good measure, eliminating overtime for millions of workers.

Democrats aren’t innocent either…

Last week, the Democratic-controlled legislature of North Carolina, a state that has gone Republican in every Presidential election since 1976, enthusiastically took up a bill to do the same mischief as the California initiative. The grab would be smaller—it would appropriate perhaps three or four of North Carolina’s fifteen electoral votes for the Democrats—but the hands would be just as dirty.

I actually agree that the electoral college is pointless for national elections, but would rather it be eliminated across all states, not just those when it would better serve one side. What’s even more suprising is this hasn’t been covered in any of the California news outlets. Only the New Yorker, and the subsequent blog entries pointing to it.

Full New Yorker article: “Votescam” by Hendrick Hertzberg

Related:

• Air America: Initiative No. 07-0032, a.k.a. the Kingmaker?
• USA Today: Is Calif. proposal election ‘reform’ or an electoral ’scam’ that would favor GOP?
• To The Center: How Not To Reform The Electoral College

My good friend Antonio captured a couple vids of me from Hijinks at the Balazo Gallery last Friday.