Saturday's Los Angeles Times carried a story which made it seem likely that the proposed ballot measure to change California's allocation of presidential electoral votes from winner-takes-all (as it is for for more than 520 of the 538 votes up for grabs in 48 of 50 states) to a district-based method is going to fail to qualify for the June 2008 ballot. Dubbed the Dirty Tricks Initiative by actor/activist Bradley Whitford, the measure would probably make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House in 2008 if it were to be enacted.
Frankly, Mad Professah (and his readers) thinks the measure clearly violates the Federal constitution, since Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives to the Legislatures the right to assign Electors. It is doubtful whether the People of the State of California can change how Electors are allocated by exercising some legislative authority that the State Legislature has ceded them through enactment of the Initiative process, but that will be up for the United States Supreme Court to decide. Bush v. Gore, anyone?
Anyway, the story is starting to get local attention:
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