Free Republic

The chutzpah award for this summer has a runaway winner. It's the small team of Republican operatives trying to rig the 2008 presidential race. "Rig" means tilting the playing field to assure continued Republican occupancy of the White House -- perhaps for a very long time. The GOP would do this by ending the winner-take-all system of parceling out electoral college votes in Democratic-leaning California. Instead of all 55 of California's electoral votes being awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote statewide -- presumably the Democrat -- they'd be divvied up by congressional district. Whichever candidate carried a...

aine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes by congressional district, and that's what the proposed California ballot measure would do. Each candidate would receive one electoral vote for every congressional district he or she captured. The statewide winner would be awarded the two electoral votes representing the state's two Senate seats. The initiative was filed by Republican lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, who hopes to qualify it for the June 2008 ballot if he and his associates -- GOP figures all -- can raise enough money. If they make it and the measure were to be approved by voters, it would be...

A prominent Republican lawyer wants to put a proposal on the California ballot next year that could shake up the 2008 presidential contest to his party's advantage. California awards its 55 electoral votes to the statewide winner — the largest single prize in the nation. But under the proposal, the statewide winner would get only two electoral votes. The rest would be distributed to the winning candidate in each of the state's congressional districts. In effect, that would create 53 races, each with one electoral vote up for grabs. The state voted Democratic in the past four presidential elections. But...