This and that Sunday

Hi there. Here's a little bit of this and a little bit of that for your Sunday evening.

First off, I've been working with Permanent Progress on their Roll Call for Democracy website, and it's online now at Rollcall4democracy.com. It's a bit of a work in progress still, but it's coming together nicely, if I do say so myself. In addition to the campaign to take a "Roll Call" of those who support election integrity reforms, it features artwork by Kathy Peterson, aka kpete from Democratic Underground. More of her fascinating art will be online within the next few weeks too. I'll be sure to link to that when it's live because, imo it's great stuff, and deserves the attention.

Check out the site for both the campaign as well as kpete's art, and while you're there you can listen to a clip of Suzanne Erb singing the Declaration of Independence.

In weekend rumor news, I'm hearing a buzz that Blackwater performed in the SDSU/BYU football game half time show at Qualcomm Stadium last night by parachuting into the stadium and distributing Blackwater promotional items. If so, I find that pretty damn outrageous. Blackwater has been very clear that they'll be conducting a big PR campaign in San Diego in the hope of swaying public sentiment that's currently running hot against their building of a para-military training camp in Potrero. That's not a big surprise. But at the college football game? If true, SDSU really dropped the ball, judgement-wise. They're an awfully controversial organization these days in light of unjustified killings they've been accused of in Iraq, and investigations into steroid abuse and weapons smuggling, State Department investigations, and being called in front of congress for a little bit of good, old fashioned over-sight. I imagine there will be more on this story, doncha think?

The Dirty Tricksters are still collecting signatures to try and get their so-called Presidential Election Reform Act on the CA ballot in time to rig the November 2008 elections. Sheesh. If this got on the ballot and passed, we might as well just let our congresscritters do our voting for us. But it seems to me that they're having a bit of trouble collecting enough sigs since the recommended date for getting them to the Secretary of State's office was November 29. That doesn't break my heart.

Let's see....what else? ....I have a job interview this week, so send me some good jobma please. Kind of like karma, but job related.

That's about all I have to report for now. Happy Monday!

Attorney seeks probe of electoral vote plan

Attorney Bernie Fadem has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about contacts between the White House, the RNC, and those behind the California Dirty Tricks Initiative.

A Lafayette attorney who specializes in election law is seeking a Congressional investigation into whether the White House was involved in pushing a California ballot initiative to change the way the state allocates its electoral votes.

Barry Fadem, who is working for the group opposed to the initiative, also made a Freedom of Information Act request with the White House on Friday to reveal all contacts between Bush Administration officials, the Republican National Committee and other political operatives discussing potential changes to the state's electoral college laws.

"We want to know if the White House improperly discussed this on taxpayer time," said Fadem, a Democrat. "But we also want to make people aware that this is not some new idea, not some good public policy that proponents keep claiming. This is truly only about one thing: stealing the presidency."

According to Chris Lehane, political consultant and spokesperson for Californians for Fair Election Reform, "The public has a strong interest in knowing if this was cooked up by the Bush White House."

Agreed. Especially since they're playing dumb about it. It's kind of amazing/amusing to watch them act like no one knows anything about this, as if it's all the work of one loose cannon RNC attorney. The RNC says they're not involved. The governor claims he doesn't know enough to comment on it. Riiiiight.

Note: when you act like you're hiding something, people will naturally want to know what you're hiding.

More dirty tricks news

Over the past few weeks, I've written about how the CA Republican party wants to use California's Electoral College electors as insurance in the '08 presidential election because of their fear they can't win the White House if the deck isn't stacked in their favor.

It's been a busy week on that front.

As a recap, the situation is this: Attorneys for the CA Republican party have filed to have an initiative placed on the June 08 ballot that would change the way California's 55 Electoral College votes are apportioned. Instead of winner take all, they're proposing they be based on the winner in each congressional district. Due to the way California is gerrymandered into fairly safe seats, the Republican presidential candidate would automatically pick up about 20 more electors.

Believe it or not, I'm with Arnold on this one.

"I feel like, if you're all of a sudden in the middle of the game start changing the rules, it's kind of odd," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-California. "It almost feels like a loser's mentality, saying, 'I cannot win with those rules. So let me change the rules.'"

Well said. I'm always very happy when I can agree with my governor.

However, I'd still like him to give it a quick read. He keeps saying he can't comment fully because he hasn't read it. It's short! It's important! His former lawyer and his party are behind it! Come on now. It'll just take five minutes. He should brush up on it before this weekend's CA Republican party convention because it's on the agenda to be formally endorsed.

I know he has a copy handy because Julia Rosen hand delivered 2,148 copies to his office on Monday;

We asked the blogosphere and thousands of Courage Campaign members to send him a copy and boy did you deliver.

But on Thursday he's still saying he's not familiar with the wording.


Doh!



You can go to the Courage Campaign website and send Arnold a message that we want him read and to lead.

On Wednesday the CA Secretary of State's office cleared the initiative for signature gathering. They need to collect 433,971 valid signatures by Feb 4th to get on the June ballot. Here are the title and official summary from the Secretary of State's office.

Presidential Electors. Political Party Nomination and Election by Congressional District. Statute.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS. POLITICAL PARTY NOMINATION AND ELECTION BY CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. STATUTE. Requires California to join two other states in selecting electors for president by the plurality vote in each congressional district. Provides for political party nomination of electors pledged to vote for that party's candidate. Independent electors to be chosen by independent presidential candidates and also elected by congressional district. Two at-large electors to be selected based on plurality of statewide vote for president. Mandates that electors vote for candidate for whom they are pledged. Eliminates $10 compensation and 5 cents per mile reimbursement of electors. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Reduced state expenses of less than $10,000 every four years. (Initiative 07-0032.)


The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1268 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 07-0032.

The proponent for this measure, Thomas W. Hiltachk, must collect the signatures of 433,971 registered voters - the number equal to 5% of the total votes cast for governor in the 2006 gubernatorial election - in order to qualify the measure for the ballot. The proponent has 150 days to circulate petitions for this measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by February 4, 2008.

Since they've got the big bucks behind this, I imagine there will be an army of paid signature gatherers out there within days.

If you want to read more about this current batch of dirty tricks, there's a lot of good posts and diaries out there.

Calitics has been all over this.

Dday has an informative and interesting diary at Daily Kos about the funding behind the effort.

Lawyers behind a California ballot proposal that could benefit the 2008 Republican presidential nominee have ties to a Texas homebuilder who financed attacks on Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign.

What are they going to do? Swiftboat the entire country?

Don't answer that.

Todd Beeton also has a story about the initiative on his Courage Campaign blog.

And finally, if you can donate $20 to save 20 electoral votes, you can do that through our friends at Act Blue. Be sure to leave them a tip!

And don't sign that petition!

Votescam

by Hendrik Hertzberg in the most recent New Yorker:

At first glance, next year’s Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

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.

Yikes. This might sound good in theory to people, but in combination with all the insane gerrymandering it would be a terrible thing.Read the whole article here. I've been reading bits about this recently, but this is the most complete article thus far. Worth a read.

I just wanted to share, because I'm generous that way. People need to understand this one, and nip it in the bud.