Democrats Against Democracy?

Posted by: Ion | September 27th, 2007 · 4:37 PM

I was perusing the posts over at the occasionally interesting leftblog The Albany Project and came across one about the recently formed Democratic group Californians for Fair Election Reform. This organization was created to resist a Republican-led ballot initiative in California called the “Presidential Electoral Reform Act,” which is being spearheaded by the Republican Californians for Equal Representation.

This ballot initiative would modify the manner in which the state’s electoral votes are awarded in presidential elections, going from the current winner-takes-all formula, to the far more democratic method of distribution used by Maine and Nebraska. That is, California’s electoral votes would be divided up by how people in its congressional districts vote for president.

In practical terms this new arrangement might throw as many as 20 of California’s 55 votes to the GOP in 2008. Assuming the Republicans can hold their core states, it could make the difference in the election. Particularly if the border-reds, Ohio (21 votes) and/or Virginia (13) go blue in 2008, as now seems conceivable.

On these grounds the California state Democratic party doesn’t like the plan at all. They instead are arguing forcefully for the status quo, which essentially mandates the votes of Republican districts go to the Democratic nominee, if he or she wins their concentrated and politically uniform urban districts (which always happens). To fight the signature drive (they call it the “Steal the State Initiative“), they’ve organized a volunteer based ‘do not sign’ campaign, distributing activists to shopping malls and other public places to warn the public against signing the GOP petition. Perhaps in an indication of how troubling this initiative is to Democrats, Art Torres, chairman of the Democratic Party of California, volunteered assurances to the press that their anti-petition activism would be completely “non-violent.” Hmm.

There’s also been a strange dual effort by the Democrats to circumvent the initiative in the state legislature, by changing the law to dump all of California’s electoral college votes on whomever wins the national popular vote. That would mean California went Bush in 2004, if you’re keeping score. Before you consider the bizarre and manifold implications of that too deeply, it’s a nonstarter. Take a read of California Conservative’s demonstration that this would expressly violate Article I of the United States Constitution and if passed, would almost certainly be overturned on those grounds.

Constitutionality is also a very serious problem for the Republican initiative too though. As Doug Kendell smartly points out for Slate, in the important 1920 Hawke v. Smith case, the Supreme Court ruled “a ballot initiative could not be used to undo a state legislature’s decision to ratify the Constitution’s 18th Amendment.” As precedent, that of course has implications for the constitutionality of a ballot initiative of this sort, which would clearly overrule the choice of a Democratic dominated and highly partisan California legislature. Thus even if the GOP ballot initiative were to pass, my guess is we can expect a hotly contested court fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

On another less substantial tack against the GOP effort, Rick Hasen argues that the Republicans are being disingenuous and unfair, by not proposing a similar arrangement in Texas. Now I can’t speak for the Texans (and presumably the Democrats are not prohibited from trying this in Texas too), but I’d love to have this arrangement here in New Mexico. That’s no Republican partisan scheme either, as it would have clearly benefited the Democrats in 2004.

Instead, it’s always seemed to me that the winner-take-all by state for EC votes was awfully undemocratic and unrealistic. That’s true even if you concede that the electoral college system has merit (as I do). Locking the electoral votes of the presidency to state borders as if the president were a senator, doesn’t make much sense to me. Nor would apportionment by congressional office erode the value of campaigning in rural districts, as Paul Weyrich argues. I guarantee you that Republicans will spend far more time in exurban California than they do today, if they’ve got a shot at 20 electoral votes there. If anything it would turn the tempo up in a lot of divided states.
But even more undemocratic, is Hasen’s suggestion that Democrats should change the law to obviate the ballot initiative vote altogether:

It is possible that Democratic members of the Legislature, fearing the Electoral College measure, could take steps to eliminate all votes on ballot measures during low-turnout primary elections. That change would be good for the initiative process in California, but legislators will have to act fast.
(Election Law Blog)

Pretty foul if you ask me.

For their part, Albany Project suggests that there is something nefarious about the fact that many of the people organizing/financing the petition drive are supporters of Rudy Giuliani (who is popular among California Republicans for some reason). In so doing, Albany conveniently ignores the fact that almost all the financiers for the counter-group are intimately associated with the Clintons, to whom they’ve given a small fortune. I’m still trying to figure out why it could matter either way though, since people in politics tend to know and support people in politics.

Manic GOP Soros antipathy aside, Democrats do seem to be uniquely more obsessive about uncovering the origin of finances, than dealing with whether the idea being financed is good or bad. The Albany Project deals with the issue as if the involvement of Rudy supporters is proven, it concludes the debate. Yeah, I’m not sure I get that either. But this thing is going to get more partisan before it gets less.
In that respect, jumping back to the primary push group against he initiative –and even with the understanding that this is a mobilization group– the CFER site’s content is almost unreadable, for the heavy injection of propagandistic commentary and totally brainless ideological keywordism. For instance (emphasis mine):

Is Rudy Giuliani behind the right-wing power grab initiative that would rig the 2008 election by splitting up California’s electoral votes?
(Californians for Fair Election Reform via The Albany Project)

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see stuff that laden with posturing ideological fish pushing, I think they must be opposed to something sensible.

In visiting the CFER’s website, the first thing you notice is this map-into-map graphic they have in the upper righthand corner. It depicts the monolithically blue Democratic California under the current winner-take-all system, suddenly acquiring this Republican red interior:

If you’re a loyal Democrat or an electoral college purist, I suppose this image is supposed to look like stark subversion of the process. The trouble for me is that the map on the right is exactly how California voted by congressional district in the 2004 election. If congressional districts are good enough for congressmen, why aren’t they for president? That those millions of red voters have their electoral power handed to a candidate they opposed (and many reviled), just doesn’t seem that democratic if there is a sensible alternative to it and there is.

I’d also note that the congressional division seems awfully close to how California voted in more apolitical boundaries too. Take the 2004 results by county. While tiny Democratic leaning Alpine County and the L.A. suburbs might be suffering a bit in the above equation, it’s pretty consistent with the congressional cut:

If we’re going to have an electoral college in this country, would it not make better sense to apportion the electoral votes closer how people actually vote? In fact, this is precisely what many Democrats sanctimoniously argued in favor of following their experience in Florida after the 2000 general election. Apparently that sentiment is now a dastardly GOP plot.

If you’re familiar with the political landscape in California’s southern, northern and western regions, you know that Republicans totally dominate these areas and are gravely offended by the fact that the San Francisco, Los Angeles and the central coastal counties pretend to speak for the entire state (not to mention the troubles in the closely divided blue areas, like Sacramento County, won by Kerry by a little over 1% of total votes cast). It doesn’t escape notice that what passes for commendable public virtue in San Francisco is as alien as a Martian invasion in the ag towns of the Central Valley. Hang out in a coffee shop in suburban Fresno County and you’ll get an earful of this sort of grief.

When divisions are this stark, state’s eventually start to break up and as it stands, that’s the only recourse red California might have against those blue counties. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Allocating electoral votes on congressional district basis would long-term, substantially reduce the sort of enmity and friction between rural, exurban, suburban and urban areas that now characterizes California politics.

It’s up to California of course, but I’d vote for this initiative. Wish I could do so here in NewMex.

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