Setback For Calif. Electoral Vote Proposal

Several influential Republicans resigned abruptly Thursday from a political committee established to change the way California awards its electoral votes in presidential elections - a proposal Democrats said was an attempt to rig the 2008 election in favor of the GOP nominee.

The shake-up dealt a devastating and likely fatal blow to the attempt to change the California vote rules for 2008. The committee was struggling because of poor fundraising, and even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had said he was dubious about the idea of changing the rules.

"Sometimes it just doesn't work out," said Kevin Eckery, a committee spokesman who also resigned Thursday. "The money hasn't been coming in the way it needs to come in."

California awards its cache of 55 electoral votes to the statewide winner in presidential elections - the largest single prize in the nation. But a prominent Republican lawyer, Thomas Hiltachk, wanted to put a proposal on the ballot that would award the statewide winner only two electoral votes, with the rest allocated according to results in each congressional district.

California has voted Democratic in the last four presidential elections. The change - if it qualified for the June primary ballot and was approved by voters - would have positioned a Republican candidate the following November to win 20 or more electoral votes in GOP-leaning districts.

Democrats argued that the change could have tilted the election in favor of the GOP candidate.

Hiltachk and his law firm resigned Thursday from Californians for Equal Representation, the committee formed to raise money to place the plan on the ballot in June. Another consultant with ties to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also pulled out.

It's estimated that it can take $1 million to $2 million to gather the signatures needed to place an initiative on the ballot. The committee had raised only a small fraction of that amount.

Leading Democrats united with Hollywood producer Stephen Bing and hedge fund manager Tom Steyer to oppose the proposal, fearing it could hand the 2008 presidential election to the Republican nominee. A committee formed to oppose the plan had been running ads depicting the proposal as a power grab for the GOP.

Supporters described the proposal as a blueprint for fairness in presidential contests.

Nineteen of the state's 53 congressional districts are represented by Republicans. President Bush carried 22 districts in 2004, while losing the statewide vote by double digits.

It takes 270 of 538 electoral votes to win the White House. Only Maine and Nebraska currently allocate their electoral votes by congressional district.

Peter Ragone, a spokesman for Californians for Fair Election Reform, the committee opposing the proposal, said, "The bottom line here is that it's clear to the entire country that the Republicans ... were trying to rig the election in California in a way that wasn't open and honest with the voters.

"It's good for the country that this is actually over," Ragone said.