CALIFORNIA-- COMMITTING POLITICAL SUICIDE?

Marlene Rose is a DWT contributor from way up in the northern reaches of the Doolittle Bad Lands. She's trying to clean up the territory. Here's a report she wrote late last night. After reading it, please watch the blogger video along the same lines we posted on Saturday.


I have always prided myself on being a Democrat, the party that fights for the less fortunate. I have not, however, considered myself a fool. The proposal to award California’s electoral votes on a district by district basis that was favored by 41% of the Democrats polled is electoral suicide.
 
If the Democratic and Independent voters of California do not wake up, we will never elect anyone but a Republican president. The new initiative being proposed by GOP lawyer Thomas Hiltachk is brilliant in its seeming fairness but is actually a political scam to keep Republicans in the White House. He proposes awarding electoral votes on a district by district basis rather than the present system in which whoever wins the popular vote in the state wins all of the electoral votes.
 
This initiative is not one that is being proposed throughout the nation. Only California will be asked to guarantee the election of the Republican candidate by handing over nearly half our electoral votes while red states like Texas can ignore any Democratic votes that may have been cast.
 
It is amazing how inventive Republicans are at stealing elections. They have mastered minority vote suppression, hackable electronic voting machines, and purging voter rolls. Nothing, however, is as sophisticated as this effort to emasculate California as a force in presidential politics.  Bob Herbert says it best:  “What the Democrats need to do now is make sure that California voters understand that they are the latest targeted pawns in the GOP’s long-standing efforts to undermine not just the Democrats, but democracy itself.” 
 
The goal is not to make elections more responsive to the will of the people, but rather to make the election of a Democrat almost impossible. Allocating 20 or more of our 55 electoral votes while the rest of the country maintains a “winner-take-all” policy is guaranteeing a Republican president in perpetuity.  . Stealing more than 20 electoral votes by the Republicans would guarantee a baseline equivalent to all the electoral votes of the winner-take-all states of  Illinois, Pennsylvania or Ohio. 
 
Our districts are so gerrymandered, no presidential candidate would ever set foot in California.  We need only count how many GOP and Democratic Congressmen and women represent this state and we would know how many electoral votes would go to each candidate.
 
Every vote should count, but that means every vote in the United States, not just in California.  Carving out California votes for the GOP candidate means no Democrat will ever have a fair opportunity to be elected president. If we do favor a change, only the proposal to endorse presidential election by popular vote will ensure the election of the person selected by the majority of the country.
 
The winner-take-all Electoral System has many faults, but for California to unilaterally commit political suicide is insane.  We should be leading the parade to elect presidents by popular vote. Until then, unless every state provides proportional representation to the Electoral College, California should not fall for this scam. No one who cares about democracy should sign the petitions to place this piece of garbage on the ballot or, if enough signatures are gathered, no one should vote for this initiative.

-Marlene Rose

UPDATE: BRADLEY WHITFORD SAYS "NO!" TO DIRTY TRICKS