Here is the GOP's "secret" weapon in the battle for the Presidency in 2008: California's Republican party has filed a ballot initiative that would award the state's [correction 55 not] 53 electoral votes based by congressional district, not on a state-wide basis.
If this passes, it will almost certainly assure that the GOP wins the presidency in 2008. And for a long time to come.
Almost no one is paying attention to this. But the threat is very, very real.
As Rik Hertzberg wrote last week in the New Yorker:
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.
http://www.newyorker.com/...
Why take this seriously? It has been filed by the same lawyers who masterminded the recall that got Schwartzenegger into the Governor's mansion, it will be voted on at a time when voters aren't going to be paying attention, and it has a superficial appeal: Who isn't for "fairness" in apportioning electoral candidates. (Of course, the minority of voters in each district remain unenfranchised by the electoral district approtionment -- the 49% of dems in each 51% repub district have no say -- as do the 49% of repubs in each 51% dem district).
So what is the solution? I'm not an expert on California initiatives, but I suspect the best way to deal with this is to counter it with another initiative that requires it to take effect, if it passes, only when a majority of other states have enacted materailly identical reforms of their allocation of electoral votes.
Why? We'll the major unfairness that the GOP proposed reform works is that it isn't nationwide. It changes the rules half-way through the game of the 2008 elections, and only to the detriment of one party's candidates and voters.
Delaying until other enough other states also act levels the playing field again.