Making sure Democrats can't win in 2008

Almost out of sight, Republicans are tinkering with the electoral college to make sure they win the election.  They've started in California, as we already know.

...They are not trying to reform the Electoral College nationally — or to divide the electoral votes of Republican states like Texas. The initiative aims at rigging the Electoral College so that even if the Democrat wins the national popular vote by a wide margin, she or he might still lose the presidency.

New York Times editors report that even though Schwarzenegger and others have repudiated their party's skulduggery, the Republican party is taking things a step or two further to make sure they have plenty of signatures on their rule-changing petition.

The initiative’s shadowy organizers –who are funded by big Republican donors — are trying to get the initiative on the ballot in large part through paid petition gathering.

There have already been reports that petition gatherers are using a variety of ruses to try to convince voters to sign — including putting a stop-the-war petition on top of it .

Now, as the Times reported today, there are charges that petition gatherers are going to shelters on Skid Row and offering homeless people Snickers bars and instant noodles in exchange for their signatures.

If the charges are true, the petition gatherers may have broken the law. There’s also the harsh irony that the people trying to buy the votes of the homeless are working to put a party in power that opposes the interests of the poor.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, by sheer coincidence mind you, the administration is finding it very difficult to process new citizenships in a timely manner.  And the delays will continue past the 2008 election.  Completely coincidental.

The Department of Homeland Security failed to prepare for a massive influx of applications for U.S. citizenship and other immigration benefits this summer, prompting complaints from Hispanic leaders and voter-mobilization groups that several hundred thousand people likely will not be granted citizenship in time to cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election.

Pure coincidence, believe me.

The new crunch -- which some USCIS officials have dubbed a "frontlog" -- threatens to create a political headache that also stems in part from a State-DHS miscommunication. In addition to raising immigration fees this summer, the Bush administration triggered another cascade of applications for legal permanent residency, or green cards, from skilled immigrant workers when it pushed back a planned July 2 deadline, largely because the two departments failed to coordinate on how many slots were available.

"It is the same pattern," said Crystal Williams, deputy director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "It strikes me as remarkable. It's not as if this could not have been predicted."

Comments

[John Breland]

The way I look at it, so long as the Democrats are intent on stealing the popular vote by vaulting in on the backs of dead voters, double voters and disenfranchised military voters (witness the 2000 and 2004 elections), the Republicans are wise to focus their attention on the electoral votes - the ones that really matter in the final analysis.

[PW]

Anything provable there? Seems to me the Republicans are very deft at accusing Democrats of doing what they themselves are doing -- vide the Gonzales Justice Department accusing Democrats, particularly in western states, of stealing votes but not being able to make the charges stick. Undoubtedly both parties have played dirty over the years in about equal measure, but in this decade the Repubs have really exceeded themselves in damaging the system.

[Carl Burton]

Funny how the Electoral College reform initiative is painted by Democratic operatives in California as a big Republican conspiracy to steal the presidential election when the Democrats have proposed the same idea in several other states.

In 2004, the Democratic Party backed an initiative in Colorado to do exactly what the initiative will do in California (unfortunately Colorado voters turned it down). This year Democrats were attempting something similar in North Carolina until Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean quietly convinced the North Carolina Democrats to stop, saying he “did not want to set a precedent Republicans could use to justify their efforts in California.” Perhaps Doctor Dean sensed that Democrats might gain as many as 7 electoral votes in North Carolina but could lose as many as 22 in California.

While we are at it, one of things we need to do is re-examine how the Electoral College votes are apportioned by the census which includes illegal aliens. The question we need to ask ourselves is should illegal aliens be counted in a census to determinable how many Electoral College votes each state is allocated.