The People's House

One of the more persistent problems with our democracy is the distance between politicians and the people. This is exacerbated by the gradual increase of the constituency, since the House of Representatives has not been expanded in almost 100 years. In the Senate it's far worse, as equal protection laws are violated on a daily basis, with my representation in California equaling the representation of Wyoming, despite this state having 74 times as many people in it. This problem of unequal representation exists in the House as well, and a group of lawyers have organized a challenge to the status quo, calling for an expansion of the House to address these inequities.

The most populous district in America right now, according to the latest Census data, is Nevada’s 3rd District, where 960,000 people are represented in the House by just one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the House. By contrast, 523,000 in Wyoming get the same voting power, as do the 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in the other.

That 400,000-person disparity between top and bottom has generated a federal court challenge that is set to be filed Thursday in Mississippi, charging that the system effectively disenfranchises people in certain states. The lawsuit asks the courts to order the House to fix the problem by increasing its size from 435 seats to at least 932, or perhaps as many as 1,761. That way, the plaintiffs argue, every state can have districts that are close to parity.

“When you look at the data, those are pretty wide disparities,” said Scott Scharpen, a former health care financial consultant from California who has organized the court challenge. “As an American looking at it objectively, how can we continue with a system where certain voters’ voting power is substantially smaller than others’?”

No incumbent will really want to change a system that dilutes their own power. They won't even sign off on giving DC voting rights in the House and expanding the body to 437 (there's an extra member for Utah in that compromise measure). But for decades, this was standard practice, with the House expanding from 65 members to 435. Other countries have governing bodies of up to 600 members despite having smaller countries. Our Congressional districts hold 700,000 people on average, which is just incredibly unwieldy. This would also rejigger the Electoral College in Presidential elections, as each state gets electoral votes based on their number of Representatives. Adding seats to shrink Congressional districts would dilute the inequity of the Senate in those elections and move us closer to a one-person, one-vote standard there.

Really we should have a unicameral legislature and a national popular vote for President, but those are a way off. The Supreme Court has never weighed in on mandating additional House members, and given the current makeup, not much good may come of that either. But it's time to build a political coalition for these changes. The bigger a Congressional district gets, the further removed that member of Congress gets from the people. It leads to Blue Dogs who don't vote their districts but can fake it using campaign contributions from corporate interests. It makes it harder for challengers to raise their profile. If you want to spark something TRULY populist, contra the teabaggers, it would be to expand the House of Representatives.

Echoes Of Failure: Feedback

I received a lot of feedback on my piece about the disappointing California election results and I want to thank everyone who participated. A few points:

• The CDP has a version of Neighbor-to-Neighbor called Neighborhood Leader. The program asks for a commitment from the activist to talk with 25 friends on multiple occasions throughout the year. I don't have metrics on it, which would be nice to know, but my suspicion is it needs to be expanded.

• There is a lot of back and forth about the extent of the ground game here in California. Many have written in to talk about the field operation in key districts and field offices throughout the state. Some have said that I overlooked this element, including all the doorhangers and phone calls made inside the state. Others have told me that the calls tried to shoehorn too many messages into one (I did have experiences calling for multiple propositions and a candidate at the same time, which ends up shortchanging all of them) and that the results on the ground in general were unfocused. And the insistence from some to talk about field elides the point. Even if I grant that every targeted legislative campaign had the most aggressive and far-reaching field program in American history, the facts are that most of these campaigns lost, and so it's time to come to terms with the fact that the type of organizing done in the state isn't working.

• Some have suggested that Democrats, in fact, did not underperform the Presidential ticket in House races, but I think a lot of this is fun with statistics. Yes, House Democrats in California may have done better than Barack Obama, but that would be because a substantial number of them had token or no competition. Like 30 out of 53. While on the chart at the link, it appears that California exceeded the Presidential numbers, the proof is in the lack of pickups despite a 24-point blowout at the top of the ticket.

• Other local organizers have the right idea. I'm going to reprint this comment in full:

We ran a very intensive and very grassroots effort in Monterey County with more than 1000 volunteers (5 fold increase over 2004) that was by and large successful, got some newcomers into office and saved some progressive incumbents from conservative challengers.

We did all of this without CDP help.

We were offered use of the CDP voter database which in many ways was quite inadequate when it came to mapping and would have costed us money. We were also offered 1000 doorhangers on Thursday before the election (we have 80,000 Democrats in Monterey County).

Instead we commissioned our own slate mailers and door hangers and mailed and hung 80,0000 and 30,000 respectively in conjunction with the local unions. We used the VAN through CAVoterConnect for free with great results for us. We were able to manage our volunteers with it and we used it for all of our phone banking and Neighbor-to-Neighbor activities.

Here is what the CDP could have done - and can still do for future campaigns:
Support the VAN and help all local parties get access. Help integrate State VAN with Obama VAN.
Conduct more capacity building, especially in how to run county-based campaigns, along the lines of Camp Obama but applied to state and local races.
Provide a template for door hangers that local parties can buy into instead of having to go out and design their own.
Work toward a more modular - bottom-up campaign.

Vinz Koller/ Chair/ Monterey County Democratic Party

I particularly want to emphasize the VAN, the California VAN is for some reason not integrated with the DNC's Votebuilder program, which doesn't make much sense to me. There ought to be an effort to clean up all that idea in the off-year to get it ready for 2010. Votebuilder is simply easier to work with and can be managed by volunteers. And since there will be off-year elections this year, it can be test run.

• I don't think I ever blamed the Obama campaign for draining the state of resources, but let me say again that I don't. In addition to many of the best volunteers leaving the state, many of the top organizers, including most of labor, left as well. And Obama's election was crucially important for a variety of reasons so you can't blame them.

• Therefore, the biggest thing California Democrats can do to reverse this disturbing trend of the "political trade deficit," sending money and organization elsewhere and never importing anything, is to argue for and pass the National Popular Vote plan, which would force locals to organize their own communities in a Presidential election. If the Electoral College were offered as a system today, it would be found to be an unconstitutional violation of the principle of "one person, one vote" as determined by the 14th Amendment. It shrinks the pool of competitive states down to a geographically significant battleground, and has made California irrelevant - again - as it has been for Presidential races for a generation. A disruptive change like the National Popular Vote would go a long way to changing how campaigns are conducted in Presidential years in California.

365, +21, +8?

Obama did indeed grab that extra electoral vote from Nebraska-02. So make it 365 EVs, with great moves into previously red territory in Indiana, North Carolina, and Nebraska.

As Jon Stewart said on his show this week, "So he won the election by 6 percentage points, but 2-1 in the electoral college. Yes, the Electoral College makes perfect sense!" Which is true, and we need the National Popular Vote, but just like in the primary, Obama's campaign worked with the playing field that they had. They knew how to microtarget at the state and even district level to maximize the votes they needed. And it was incredibly successful.

Meanwhile, we have two more calls for Democrats in the House: Frank Kratovil in MD-01, and Tom Perriello in VA-05. Kratovil's going to be a Blue Dog, but it's notable that he won the seat occupied by Wayne Gilchrest, an antiwar Republican who was primaried out by the Club for Growth. Gilchrest then supported and campaigned for the Democrat and helped him win the seat. As for Perriello, this is a glorious upset. Virgil Goode was a grade-A wingnut, and Perriello is a smart progressive who helped found Avaaz.org, the global MoveOn. He was a Responsible Plan endorser, too. He ran a come-from-behind race that made up maybe 30 points in the final months.

And in the Senate, Al Franken keeps closing the gap on Norm Coleman - it's down to 221 votes. That's going to hit a recount. Plus, Nate Silver has done an analysis of the uncounted votes in the Alaska Senate race, and he thinks Mark Begich could still pull it out. Don't underestimate the Silver.

Like I said, it's hard to evaluate Election Day until all these races are called. It's rounding into a very good night.

North Carolina, Nebraska; Obama Country

On top of Obama capturing North Carolina's electoral votes, it appears he has snagged one electoral vote from Omaha, as well:

Good news for Barack Obama supporters.

His odds of bagging an electoral vote in Nebraska grew stronger this morning, with word that 10,000 to 12,000 early ballots and 5,200 provisional ballots are left to count in Douglas County.

Obama won about 61 percent of the early votes counted before Tuesday's election. If that percentage holds with the early ballots left to count, Obama stands a strong chance of winning the Omaha-area 2nd Congressional District.

Republicans did not concede defeat this morning, but they acknowledged the long odds.

This would be the first time any state has split their electoral votes, and it would get Obama up to 365 EVs with Missouri still uncalled (though McCain is likely to win there). Obama won pretty much all the swing states, by the way, some with very narrow margins. That's the power of the ground game, and it worked to perfection. Indiana and North Carolina and NE-02 would not have gone to Obama without those efforts.

They all laughed when Howard Dean said we could change the map and compete in places Democrats never competed. 90% of this was just showing up, saying who you were and what you stood for, and letting people make up their own minds. They chose against fear and division, and chose Barack Obama.

Now he must be worthy of their choice. But at some point, you'd think somebody would thank Howard Dean.

You can right here.

Nevada

A Suffolk poll shows Obama up 10 in Nevada. I've been doing a lot of grasssroots work, mostly with Nevada, and the great thing about that state is that their early voting stations are plentiful (practically at every Albertson's) and Obama's people have made early voting a priority. Pretty much every Democrat you talk to out there says they're voting early. One estimate, based on 2004 numbers, is that 40% of Nevada has already voted. Now, that'll be less because I think turnout will eclipse 2004. But the point is that McCain will have LOTS of ground to make up on Election Day, probably too much.

And adding Nevada to Iowa, New Mexico and the Kerry states gives Obama 269 electoral votes, which would give him a tie in the Electoral College. Plus there's Virginia, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, that extra electoral vote in Nebraska....

Let me remind you, however, with an assist from the Obama campaign, not to get overconfident:

Looking Good, But Still Some Storm Clouds

With 8 days to go, the news out of the polling world is stable and solid. Obama leads measurably in enough states to win the election, and even the toss-up states are moving his way. The election is being played out on red state turf, and with New Mexico and Iowa looking great, and Colorado and Virginia close to it, there is simply a lot to be excited about if you're the Obama campaign. Though the traditional media wants to inflate their ratings by continuing to call this a close race, they're deluding themselves.

Worried about "the tightening?"

Well, Obama's national lead has been stable at 7% for a month now. The national campaign is not tightening, and we are just seeing statistical noise.

Even if the campaign were tightening, Obama would still have a comfortable national lead. According to polling conducted over the weekend during the tracking poll "tightening," Obama reaches 264 electoral votes in states where he leads by 9.5% or more, passes 277 in Virginia where he leads by 8.0%, and hits 286 in states where he leads by 7.3% or more. So, he is actually doing even better in the Electoral College, where 270 votes are needed to win, than he is doing in national polls where he leads by 7%.

However, don't underestimate the ability of the powers that be, the gatekeepers, to desperately try to keep a hold on power, on a number of fronts, outside the normal electoral process. We have retailers telling their managers that there will be negative consequences to a Democratic victory. They are particularly frightened about the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers at a company to unionize. This is extra-legal, to indoctrinate your own employees politically, and it shows why EFCA is needed, actually, because this type of union-busting happens during a "free" election in the workplace. But it's not going to stop.

Neither are the efforts of committed Republicans to game the system in order to save the election:

"5,000 Coloradans whose voter status is in limbo because of [a] controversial check box...The registration form asks for a driver's license or state ID number. If applicants don't have that, they're supposed to check a box and then put down at least the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. But thousands of people didn't check the box. According to a policy adopted last year by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, these applications are supposed to be listed as incomplete...National and local voting-rights organizations criticize Coffman's policy, saying it violates other federal laws. They say Coffman is unfairly putting up barriers for people who are eligible to vote and want him to change his policy."

The check box is "controversial" because you are asked to check it on the form if you don't "have" a driver's license or ID card [...] So, here's the thing - what's the definition of "have?" I may have one at my house or in my car, but not with me at the very moment I am filling out the registration form. In that case, it would be logical - and, in fact, honest - for me to not check that box, while also putting down the last four digits of my social security number as my selected method of verifying my registration. Alternately, for whatever reason (privacy, etc.), I may simply feel more comfortable listing the last 4 digits of my social security number, rather than my entire driver's license number. So therefore, I might have listed my social security number and not checked the box.

And yet, if you made any of those logical choices - if you gave all the social security information required by law, but simply didn't check the box - Coffman is attempting to use that choice to potentially invalidate your registration and prevent you from voting.

And this kind of suppression is not just happening at the state level, but at the federal level as well, as George Bush has ordered the Justice Department to step into the Ohio voter registration controversy, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that the Secretary of State need not verify hundreds of thousands of registration forms against federal documents and throw out even those which have a typo on either side.

6 million or so people are going to go to the polls on Election Day and be told that they can't vote. There may be legitimate reasons for that, like lack of registration, or completely illegitimate ones, like them being purged from the rolls. But they won't be voting. And that is likely to hurt the Democrats.

I'm still more worried about November 5 than November 4. But you should educate yourself on the potential problems with your vote and be prepared to fight for it. The Election Protection wiki is a good source of information, and there's also 866-OUR-VOTE, a number you can call if you have problems on Election Day.

Yep, He Did Concede

After denying that they were giving up on states like Colorado and focusing on Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign essentially copped to it by reducing their ad buys in the Rocky Mountain State and four others:

Democrats who monitor advertising spending now put at five the number of states where Senator John McCain is reducing his advertising – New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota.

In essence, Mr. McCain’s campaign has decided to spread the advertising time he bought for the upcoming week in those states over the next two final weeks.

While station managers in the affected states said they were not ruling out the possibility that Mr. McCain would pump money back in before election day, on Nov. 4, the move represents a stark reordering of priorities.

Democrats were predicting Mr. McCain would use the savings to increase his advertising in Pennsylvania and, possibly, Ohio and Florida, all of which have become that much more vital should Mr. McCain have to concede states like Colorado and Wisconsin.

This is probably happening because the RNC is pulling up stakes. They aren't stopping the creation of "hybrid" ads that they can help pay for because, as the McCain team spins it, they want the nominee to control message. He was doing so anyway. The RNC is going to try and hold the line and save the possibility for filibuster in the Senate.

As for why Pennsylvania and Iowa have become the final frontier for McCain, it's simple: they are at least an option:

*** McCain’s path to 270: So many pundits and analysts are wondering why McCain is continuing to push for Iowa and Pennsylvania, despite the daunting poll numbers in those two states. There are two reasons. First, he's run out of options. If you assume Colorado is gone and that Virginia is teetering, he has to find 270 EVs somewhere. Second, Iowa and Pennsylvania are two of the oldest states in the union, as far as the age of their populations. Both states have tons of seniors, and if McCain can turn things around again with seniors, he should see movement first in these two states. Simply put, the campaign doesn't have a lot of options; it's not worth attempting to hold states that get McCain to 250 or 260 electoral votes. The game is getting to 270, and Iowa and Pennsylvania may be his last hope at keeping a path to 270 alive.

That's pretty much it. They're more susceptible, it is likely, to the "experience" message, as well as any last-minute Jeremiah Wright sightings, as Nate Silver notes. But there's a big roadblock to this strategy: reality.

4,060,647
2,917,747
869,707

Those are the current numbers of registered and active Democrats, Republicans and independents in Pennsylvania. Democrats make up more than half the total -- 52 percent, in fact -- well outdistancing the Republican's 33 percent. Suppose that McCain were to split Pennsylvania's independents with Obama and win Republicans 92-8. He would need to carry 23-24 percent of Pennsylvania's Democrats to win the state; George Bush carried 15 percent.

As we reported yesterday, however, negative advertising does not seem to be a good strategy for winning over lapsed Democrats; on the contrary, Democratic solidarity has increased markedly in recent weeks, with Barack Obama now on target to win as much support among his party any Democratic nominee has in any recent election.

There's always the lawyer strategy, to delegitimize the election as somehow cooked up by ACORN, Bill Ayers and The Army of Nubians. And Pennsylvania not voting until Election Day means McCain is not in a huge hole as it stands right now. But I think we can be realistic about this. Hopefully Obama is pouring a lot of resources into the Keystone State, just in case. I know I'll be calling my family and telling them the election hinges on them.

McCain Concedes

I know we're supposed to be somber and work like we're 10 points down, but I don't know how else you can characterize this strategy, if it's accurate:

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada ... And here is the biggest risk of all -- yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

New Mexico and Iowa were always done; it's fine for McCain to concede those. But it doesn't leave him much of a path to victory, and giving up on Colorado leaves him with basically one path. The Upper Midwest is fine for Obama, and the Pacific Coast is fine. He's really sinking everything into Pennsylvania. And not ONLY Pennsylvania. McCain has to in addition pull off wins in 7 states that are tight right now:

Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia

If he took Pennsylvania he could afford to lose one or maybe even two of those - but the idea that McCain's going to come back in Pennsylvania doesn't seem plausible. The polling is extremely static:



Here's Markos:

That's remarkable consistency between the pollsters -- Obama between 52-54, and McCain between 38-41. There's nothing here to give McCain's campaign, or his supporters, hope that this strategy will pay off. Not to mention that they're investing so much time and money into Pennsylvania that it has given Obama an opening in places like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, and so on. And Nevada is looking increasingly good -- pair up the Silver State with Missouri, Virginia, or North Carolina, and it matters little (for electoral purposes) what happens in Pennsylvania.

Indeed, the Nevada early voting is looking fantastic - 59% of the ballots have been filled out by Democrats, compared to 27% for Republicans.

I'm just not seeing what makes Pennsylvania the firewall state - perhaps it's this:

The state Republican Party filed an injunction Friday against Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and ACORN, alleging a fair vote on Nov. 4 is impossible because of rampant voter fraud.

The injunction signals a step up in action against ACORN, which for weeks has been the recipient of attacks from the state GOP and John McCain's presidential campaign.

At a press conference in the Capitol, state GOP Chairman Bob Gleason Jr. said the sheer number of registrations submitted by ACORN has overwhelmed many county election offices and the state department has not provided the local bureaus with enough support.

"I am not confident we can trust the results of this election," Gleason said.

We all know this is absurd, completely absurd. But maybe it's the last thing McCain can cling to.

...considering Obama outdrew McCain by roughly 99,985 in Missouri, I don't think the Show-Me State is so safe, either. What an embarrassment of advance work two weeks before an election.

Sen. John McCain stopped in Columbia on Monday afternoon.

The Republican presidential nominee from Arizona landed at the Columbia Regional Airport around 12:30 p.m. As McCain disembarked from the plane, a man yelled, "Go get 'em, John."

McCain shook a few hands and embraced Christine Ellinger, the campaign's fourth congressional district co-chair.

Ellinger said McCain is going to tour Columbia businesses "and get to know people and what they're doing and daily life."

A crowd of about 15 people assembled outside the airport's fence to see him descend from the plane.

Small-Ball and Scrounging

Looks like the McCain campaign is going after Maine-02, while the Obama campaign is looking to flip Nebraska-02. Those are the only states that split electoral votes.

I'm pretty sure they never have split them, so the chances of this are remote. What I'm more interested in is the fact that, with Michigan off the table, McCain's team appears to have conceded Colorado, as I suspected yesterday:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) now must win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Minnesota in order to get enough electoral votes to win the presidency, his campaign says.

Those were considered swing states in 2000 and 2004, but George W. Bush lost them both times.

"Our ability to pick off one of those three states is where our fortunes are largely held," a McCain official said. "These are states where Barack Obama is on the defense."

McCain doesn't need to win any of these as long as he holds the Bush states, in theory. But Iowa and New Mexico are trending away from him, and if he thinks that he has to win one of the above states, they must feel that Colorado and/or Nevada is lost, too.

Wow.

Meanwhile McCain's campaign has gone 100% negative.

Dirty Trick Flatlines

This thing is done.

The initiative to change how California's Electoral College votes are awarded in the race for the White House will not appear on the June statewide ballot, according to campaign officials.

In a brief statement e-mailed to reporters this afternoon, the California Counts political team said they are now shooting for the November ballot after being unable to gather enough signatures in time for this week's drop-dead June deadline.

"Due to the tight calendar we are operating under and the challenge of raising money and gathering signatures during the Holiday season," says the statement, "we understand that submitting signatures and having them counted in time to make the June ballot, is no longer a realistic goal."

It will get slaughtered if it makes the November ballot. The whole point of the Dirty Trick was to ready it for June, a low-turnout election with a lot of other Republican initiatives up for grabs. In November, there will be a Presidential race and an expected high turnout. I'd actually sign a petition to get it on the ballot in November. I'd LOVE to give a reason for progressives and Democrats to get out to the polls and energetic to beat back a Republican dirty trick. It would be a great help down-ballot, especially in those close Congressional races.

Fantastic. And you have to wonder whether a ballot measure that managed to only gather 500,000 signatures in a state of 38 million people is all that popular, anyway. The Dirty Tricksters would be better off cutting their losses and packing it in. I sincerely hope they don't.

UPDATE: Here's the full story in the Sacramento Bee.

California Counts has until Feb. 4 to submit their signatures. Gilliard's statement said his group had collected more than 500,000 signatures; political strategists believe they need about 700,000 to ensure they have enough valid ones to meet a state threshold.

"CalCounts will continue with its fundraising and signature drive because we believe Californians deserve the right to vote on this important initiative to reform the Electoral College and to make our state count again in presidential elections," Gilliard said in the statement.

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Dirty Tricks on Life Support

This Dirty Tricks Initiative nail-biter is finally starting to make more sense to me, thanks to Kevin Yamamura at the Sacramento Bee. There is indeed a firm deadline to make the June ballot, January 24. Secretary of State Bowen recommended an early deadline for signatures, because local election boards basically have no time to do all the random counting needed to qualify the initiative between now and then. By missing that deadline the dirty tricksters risk missing the June ballot, as election boards must ramp up for the February 5 primary and that takes priority. The SacBee article is one of the first to inform what's really going on here.

Counties are slammed with duties that include mailing ballots to overseas voters, preparing ballot guides, training poll workers and gearing up for absentee voting that begins Jan. 7. At the same time, many county election offices are juggling staff vacation time around the holidays.

"They're risking it, honestly," Weir said of Gilliard's initiative effort. "They're risking it. They're up against a tidal wave of programming ... You can't miss deadlines when you have a live election going."

Dave Gilliard, now the head trickster for the initiative, again reiterated that he'd push ahead for the November 2008 ballot if his efforts to make the June ballot were unsuccessful. That does not sound like someone who's confident. Not to mention the potential investigation over shenanigans with the signature gathering itself, which could present challenges to the count. I'd say this thing is about 75% done for the June ballot. And in November, it gets slaughtered in a high-turnout Presidential election, PLUS it excites Democrats to go to the polls, helping us in every other race.

Gilliard did not return repeated phone calls Monday, but wrote in an e-mail, "We are still hopeful of making the June ballot but understand we are at the mercy of the calendar."

Yes, you're at the mercy of something.

Still Trickstin'

The forces trying to put the Dirty Tricks Initiative on the June ballot in California had a deadline of November 29 to gather signatures. That has passed and they still need signatures and money, but somehow the movement rages on:

Organizers had set this week as a deadline for wrapping up their petition drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29.

Campaign manager Dave Gilliard said that agents would work through the weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June's ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek.

Gilliard was less than certain that he would reach his goal of 700,000 names, a number allowing leeway for signatures that might be disqualified.

"We won't know until they're collected," he said.

Man, the whole initiative structure in California is weird. Bowen RECOMMENDED a deadline? Does that have any force of law? Guess not.

Initiative backers are already floating that they'll push off efforts to November, which would be fantastic, because it wouldn't come close to passing compared to catching everyone napping in a low-turnout June election. So obviously there's a lot of weakness here.

My favorite part was at the very end:

The idea of altering California's system has been discussed within Republican circles for years.

It became so serious in the 2004 campaign that California Republicans approached the Republican National Committee about it.

But the GOP and President Bush's political team concluded that Bush could win the election without the added boost that such a move would bring.

Even the BUSH campaign thought this idea was too hot to handle. Soon, these chumps will find out the same thing.

Bigger Than Dirty Tricks: The Corruption of Direct Democracy

So I edited this video for Courage Campaign about the dirty tricks initiative. Erik Love went up to UC-Santa Barbara and explored the foul underbelly of paid signature gatherers.



There's no smoking gun here, and yet there's a lot of smoke. Clearly the petitioners are luring potential signers over there with the prospect of helping kids survive cancer, and then the dirty tricks initiative is sprung upon them. I think the most damning bit is when the signature gatherer admits that he has nothing to do with the procedures and he is just told how many signatures to get. There's a "by any means necessary" approach that goes beyond this initiative and to the signature gathering process as a whole. It's a scummy, dirty business, and this gives it a little bit of sunshine.

Erik has more at DKos.

UPDATE: And more shenanigans.

The chairman of a committee formed to fight a ballot initiative to change how California’s electoral college votes are apportioned has asked the city attorney here to investigate a report that a group collecting signatures for the initiative has offered food to homeless people in exchange for signing the petitions [...]

Mr. Steyer’s letter, dated Nov. 19, stems from an article in The Los Angeles Downtown News that detailed reporters’ observations of signature gatherers asking homeless people on the city’s notorious Skid Row for their signatures to help qualify the electoral vote initiative and three others, as well as asking them to fill out voter registration cards.

In exchange, the paper reported, homeless people and those in nearby shelters were given Snickers bars, instant noodles and other snack foods.

If California outlawed initiatives tomorrow, I don't think I'd miss them.

Nunes, McCarthy want to facilitate big bucks for dirty tricks

Buried inside this Politico article about Rudy Giuliani's many ties to the Dirty Tricks initiative is this nugget:

There are actually two potential ballot initiatives. One would allocate California’s Electoral College votes proportionally, as opposed to the current winner-take-all format. The other affects redistricting.

Where they connect? California Republican Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin O. McCarthy have asked the Federal Election Commission for a legal opinion on whether they can raise unlimited donations to help the redistricting initiative. But a money-and-politics watchdog group argues that would blow a hole in the 2002 campaign finance reform law that bans federal officeholders from soliciting such big checks — and pave the way for presidential contenders to urge their supporters to shovel money into the proposed Electoral College initiative.

Nunes and McCarthy may be the safest two GoOPers in the state. They are acting as the battering rams to knock down the walls of campaign finance reform, not just for the Dirty Tricks initiative but a whole host of pernicious ballot measures.

In a way, they're trying to retroactively immunize people like Rudy and Darrell Issa for their already-questionable efforts. It's just a hop, skip and a jump from soliciting for signatures, which both campaigns have done, to soliciting for money.

As for the bait and switch techniques being employed to gather signatures, there's going to be a LOT more on this to come.

Uh, Issa's Breaking the Law, Too

Bill Cavala knows what he's talking about.

In a story printed in today’s Sacramento Bee, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa is said to be “sending out letters to the same voters who signed the recall position in 2003”.

But that’s against the law. California Elections Code 18650 states clearly that, “No one shall knowingly or willfully permit the list of signatures on an initiative, referendum, or recall petition to be used for ANY PURPOSE other than qualification of the initiative, referendum or recall”. [Emphasis added] Violation of this section is a misdemeanor.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you expect a Member of Congress to know the law? Well, maybe we can’t expect a Republican Member of Congress to obey the law??

Somebody alert Jerry Brown. Darrell Issa is breaking the law, and look what the result could be:

While the violation involving the use of the data is only a misdemeanor, providing the signatures, database, and anything else owned by the Recall Committee is an "in kind contribution"-- an unreported contribution. The Recall committee needs to approve it in order to provide this asset to the "California Counts" committee that is trying to qualify the Electoral College scheme on the ballot. Such a use could be in violation of the trust provisions that govern ballot measure expenditures (felonies). And the unreported contribution and the person controlling the committee could be prosecuted under the criminal misdemeanor provisions of the political reform act. (Where the penalty is loss of office) (emphasis mine)

I don't think that you could remove someone from federal office at the state level, right? But dare to dream. Would that be some sweet justice for the architect of the California recall, or what?

Horrible Numbers For Re-Animated Dirty Tricks

While the turnout model for a June non-Presidential primary is unknown, this should cheer people who don't want to see California's electoral votes stolen by an unbalanced dirty trick.

When voters are read the title and summary of the proposed initiative, a solid majority opposes the measure - 53 percent would vote NO if the election were held today and only one out of five voters (22%) support the initiative while a quarter of the electorate (25%) is currently undecided. This is one of the lowest levels of support we have ever seen in our polling for a statewide initiative in California.

It doesn't sound like this is a tilted poll designed to get a certain result. It sounds like the months of harping on this both through the netroots and in the media are having an impact. They may yet get this dud on the ballot, but we'll crush it on Election Day.

Of course, we wouldn't even be talking about this if it weren't for the splitting of the primary races allowing for a low-turnout election in the middle of the summer to be an inviting target for Republican dirty tricksters. The real reason for moving up the Presidential primary was not just to keep up with the Joneses and "make California heard" in the Presidential process - if that was the goal they're failing miserably - was to ensure that termed-out lawmakers could serve again in the Legislature, by putting the term limits change on the February ballot in time for them all to run again in June. And now that initiative is starting to falter. So the Legislature created the conditions for any number of pernicious Republican ballot measures because they wanted to stay in power - and now they may not even accomplish that.

Dirty Tricks Initiative - Giuliani Campaign In Trouble?

A top official of the effort to steal up to 20 electoral votes in California sent out an email to supporters of the Rudy Giuliani campaign asking them to sign petitions to get the measure on the ballot. This could be a violation of federal election law, which prohibits coordination between Presidential campaigns and separate ballot issues. Top of the Ticket has the latest.

The missive, obtained by The Times' Dan Morain, is addressed, "Hello Fellow Rudy Supporter!" Its author, Tony Andrade, is a Republican activist who helped draft the electoral college initiative. Previously, he was among those who helped place the ultimately successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis on the ballot in 2003 [...]

Chris Lehane, a Democratic activist who is organizing the campaign to block the measure, said of the Andrade e-mail: “It sounds like something that the Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice will be very interested in seeing.”

Maria Comella, spokeswoman for Giuliani’s White House bid, previously has stressed that neither he nor his campaign has had anything to do with pushing the ballot initiative.

It's unclear how Andrade would have gotten a list of Giuliani supporters in California without some form of coordination. The initiative's new backers, most of them connected to Giuliani in one way or another, are running from this as fast as possible.

Veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who is overseeing the attempt to put the initiative before voters, distanced himself from Andrade’s note.

“None of us has anything to do with any [presidential] campaign; we understand the law very, very well,” Rollins said. Pledging to try to “make sure that [the e-mail] gets stomped,” Rollins added, “We need to be very sensitive to the fact that people have speculated that this is part of the Giuliani campaign.”

The email included a link to the petition and asks signers to get 10 other people to sign it as well. A campaign confident in their ability to get the necessary signatures wouldn't rely on an email ask, and they certainly wouldn't come this close to violating election law.

This is not the first time that a link has been uncovered between the Giuliani campaign and the dirty tricks initiative. In fact, almost every connection we've seen has gone in this fashion. You'll remember that the first incarnation of the measure was derailed when a murky donation from a shell group in Missouri was eventually traced to Paul Singer, Giuliani's northeast finance director.

These are serious charges, and the Federal Election Commission needs to address them immediately. Steve Benen has more.

Rudy's Fingerprints All Over This Dirty Trick

Frank Russo has so far had the best coverage of Rudy Giuliani's involvement in the since-imploded Dirty Tricks campaign to steal a bunch of California's electoral votes. It appears that practically everyone associated with this campaign had a tie to Rudy Giuliani in some form or another. We already knew that the lone funder, laundered through a hastily assembled LLC in Missouri called "Take Initiative America," was actually the chair of Giuliani's northeast funding operation named Paul Singer. What we didn't know was that this laundering, crafted to skirt the strict election laws in California, was part of a pattern of interlocking front groups that would hide who was behind this whole thing - perhaps even the candidate himself. This quote is from Chris Lehane, who was running the opposition to the Dirty Tricks campaign and was in a position to delve pretty deeply into what was going on here.

"Virtually everyone who was involved in this at every level had a Giuliani connection, and no real connection to the other Republican candidates. Two of the partners at the law firm at the law firm that was responsible for this were Giuliani contributors, including Charles Bell who contributed $1300 days before the initiative was filed and he's the deputy treasurer. You have Charles V. Hurth III, who does not have a history of political giving--I believe he had given a hundred dollars to a state senator prior to this and he gave $2,000 to Giuliani. You have John Wilcox, who was the spokesperson for Hurth, who comes out of the Bill Simon organization. Bill Simon is a Co-Chair in California for the Giuliani campaign as well as a policy advisor. Kevin Eckerly, the spokesperson for the effort is someone who has been quoted in the press being supportive of Giuliani and the Giuliani campaign. And again, when you went through all of these folks, each and every time, virtually every road ultimately led back to Giuliani.

"And, you know, I've said before, I'm originally from the state of Maine. You to bed at night, there's no snow on the ground, you wake up and there's snow on the ground. You can pretty safely conclude that it snowed. In an effort like this if everyone who is involved are connected to one Presidential campaign and they continue to gather signatures and you wake up the next day and find out that the person who in fact was funding it was indeed from the Giuliani campaign, I think one conclusion that one can safely draw is that it was the Giuliani campaign that was ultimately behind this.

"When you have a series of shadowy Nixonian front groups that are created to directly impact who the next President of the United States is going to be, then that's something that is a cause for concern, not only of voters here in California, but all across the country.

I think it's safe to say that the string-pullers in the Republican Party would be happy with Giuliani as a nominee, mainly because of his faux-moderate stances that play well outside the base, and his willingness to play as dirty as anybody this side of Karl Rove. "Nixonian" is the key word. This decade has been filled with ratfucking and voter suppression and all sorts of attempts to influence state and national elections. The Republicans have time and again seized on the creakiness of the election systems, which vary from state to state, and used everything at their disposal to turn the system against Democrats and toward their own candidates.

You can absolutely see that Giuliani's core message that he wants played in the media is that he's electable. His strategy memo specifically lists California as one of the states which would suddenly become competitive were he the nominee:

More importantly, the Mayor puts blue states like Connecticut, New Jersey, Wisconsin, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington in play. Pat Toomey, President of the Club for Growth, states that "If Giuliani wins the nomination, he would be a fascinating candidate in that he really re-draws the map." Toomey points out that Giuliani could carry New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania ‘"so he changes the political calculus of the Electoral College dramatically."9 And Mayor Giuliani may be the only Republican candidate that can now compete and win in Ohio against Hillary Clinton.

If that were the case, he wouldn't need to finance a dirty trick from behind the scenes that would deliver 20-odd electoral votes to him. If the states were truly in play, he would play by the rules. No, this is an attempt to put this map-changing bug in the ear of the media so they're not surprised by a victory in some blue state, whether it came about legally or not. It's the classic strategy of an ultra-confidence public veneer, combined with manipulating results behind the scenes.

There's already an FEC complaint filed, along with a request to refer the matter to the US Justice Department. But those investigations will go nowhere, even in the off chance that they are initiated. This is something that will have to be investigated and dug up. Take Initiative America was created in one day and suddenly received a $175,000 infusion of cash from a Giuliani fundraiser (and the date of this transaction was - and this is precious - September 11). Considering that this initiative would impact the Presidential election, no agent of a campaign could contribute more than $2,300. Furthermore, he violated disclosure requirements. Here's some highlights from the press conference following the formal FEC complaint.

So we would very much like the FEC to look into this, to determine what Mr. Giuliani knew, when he knew it, what conversations he and Mr. Singer had about the contribution, about Take Initiative America; how Take Initiative America was created, whose idea was it? Did Mr. Hurth talk to Mr. Singer? How did it come about that $175,000 was transferred the day that the corporation was established? There had to be some coordination there and we'd like the FEC to into it.

The other thing we'd like the FEC to ask is: Where did the $175,000 come from? Did it come from Mr. Singer personally" Or did it come from a corporation that he controls?

If it came from a corporation that he controls, then that too would be impermissible because Federal candidates prohibited under Federal law from soliciting or accepting a contribution from a corporation.

We're also concerned that there may have been coordination between the Giuliani campaign and Californians for Equal Representation. In fact, Marty Wilson, the chief fundraiser for Equal Representation, who resigned just last week, was quoted in the press as saying that he had "heard" that the Giuliani people were interested in the effort in California, and that they were praying that it would commit--it obviously refers to the money.

This feels like one of those things that starts small and just balloons. Paul Singer has a colorful past; he's known as a "vulture," someone who buys up debt from poor countries and demands payment at a substantial markup. I'm certain more can be gleaned about this guy, his connection to the Giuliani campaign, and what Rudy himself may have known about his involvement with the Dirty Tricks campaign in California. These are the kind of things that take down political careers.

The Power Of Activism

The LA Times is reporting on its website that the dirty tricks campaign is dead in the water:

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

The reality is hundreds of thousands of signatures must be gathered by the end of November to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot.

That's actually not quite true, the signatures have until February, I believe, so there's plenty of time for them to restart this. But the money coming in to fund this thing was extremely dirty, and once it was exposed maybe they said "to hell with this pipe dream."

If this holds, it's important to note that we did this. The Democratic Party, a big-money independent campaign, and the 'roots all worked toward the same goal on this one, for once. This got about 200x the attention that any initiative I've ever seen pre-ballot. The governor was repeatedly put on the spot. The media was alerted over and over. The netroots rose up to fight this from day one and a lot of very talented people put in a lot of early effort. I think that the backers recognized that this fastball wasn't going to slip by the outside corner.

Making noise early WORKS. This doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal to begin with - it was. But they understood that they were about to arouse a sleeping giant, and energize California Democrats like never before. Hopefully, we can STILL do that, dirty trick or no dirty trick.

UPDATE: The full story is now up. Here. Hiltachk and spokesman Kevin Eckery apparently didn't like the undisclosed nature of contributions.

The campaign received only one sizable donation -- $175,000. That is less than one-tenth of the $2 million typically needed to gather sufficient signatures to qualify a measure for the California ballot.

The donation arrived on Sept. 11, one day after Missouri attorney Charles A. Hurth III created a company called TIA Take Initiative America that served as the vehicle for the donation. But the individual donors to the organization were not known.

Hiltachk said he had demanded that "Take Initiative America fully disclose the source of its funds," and said he was assured it would make such a disclosure soon.

"Nonetheless," Hiltachk said, "I am deeply troubled by their failure to disclose prior to my demand and by their failure to disclose to me or to our committee that Take Initiative America had been formed just one day prior to making the contribution. . . .

"I am not willing to proceed under such circumstances," Hiltachk said. "Therefore, I am resigning my role in this campaign."

Eckery added: "There's no reason to be cute on campaign contributions. We had nothing to hide, and the public has every right to know."

No Dirty Tricks - The Movie

I was up half the night putting together this little video for the Courage Campaign's effort to fight this Republican dirty trick to split California's electoral votes and steal the Presidential election. We got a handful of semi-famous bloggers together (Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake, John Amato from Crooks and Liars, Howie Klein from Down With Tyranny, some Kos diarists, and more) and sent a message that we can fight this thing, energize California Democrats, and make the Republicans wish they never brought it up in the first place.



The Courage Campaign is setting up a conference call featuring Bradley Whitford of The West Wing to discuss the next steps. You can RSVP for it at the link.