Breaking News: Republicans Give Up Scheme to Change Electoral College for California

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

The Los Angeles Times will be reporting tomorrow that the somewhat mysterious group that has been backing an initiative to change the Electoral College to split California's votes along Congressional District lines are giving up the ghost on their drive to place the measure on the ballot. This, according to the LA Times blog, Top of the Ticket.

The Times says that Democrats and others opposing this change, which would have handed over 20 electoral votes to the Republican candidate for President, more or less the equivalent of the size of Ohio's Electoral College vote, want to make sure that this monster is really dead.

Hat Tip to My DD, a national blog for spotting this just posted news from the L.A. Times.

The campaign for this initiative appears to have received its largest donation from out of state sources and there may be more interesting news about this as well. It appears that at least one of the entities whose name surfaced involving the laundering out of state donations in last year's eminent domain ballot Prop 90 was also connected to this effort as well. We carried an article about the Prop 90 out of state donations last year.

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle broke a major story on the donations in today's paper.

There were calls for California Republicans to denounce the ballot proposition, however, the state Republican Party recently endorsed the measure. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stated he had not seen the language and refused to take a position against the initiative, prompting blogger Julia Rosen to stage a bit of Guerilla Theater, showing up at the Governor's office with over 2000 faxed copies of the initiative.

Art Torres, Chair of the California Democratic Party, challenged Republican candidate for President Rudy Giuliani in a statement issued earlier today, saying: “News reports today raised serious concerns about Rudy Giuliani’s involvement in the latest GOP attempt to steal the White House. It’s time for Rudy Giuliani and his backers in the Show Me State to ‘show me the money’ – more specifically, where the money behind this initiative is coming from and who is driving this effort. The so-called Presidential Election Reform Act is nothing more than a partisan power grab intended to rig the 2008 Presidential election."

There may be ore fallout from this, but it is good news for the Democratic Presidential nominee, and good for a level playing field for next November's election.