Changing California rules on electing the president

Buried in the avalanche of proposed initiatives under consideration for the June 2008 ballot is an innocuous looking measure that changes the requirements for distributing presidential electors in California. But it could dramatically alter how we elect the president of the United States.

Electoral votes are distributed by states depending on the size of the state's congressional delegation: California has 55 electoral votes, two for the U.S. senators and the one for each of the state's congressional districts. It takes 270 electoral votes to elect the president.

By tradition, states have awarded all their electoral votes to the person who wins the popular vote for president, but it does not have to be that way. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry got all of California electoral votes -- more electoral votes than any state has ever had in American history -- because he received 6.7 million popular votes in California. President Bush, who received 5.5 million votes, got no electoral votes.

The initiative, filed last month by a prominent Republican attorney, would make one seemingly simple change. The two electoral votes representing the U.S. senators would still be awarded to who wins the most votes statewide, but the other 53 electoral votes -- representing the state's congressional districts -- would be awarded to the candidate who wins each district.

Very often the simplest things make the biggest changes, and this is such a case. A small shift in electoral votes can have a huge impact, especially in a close presidential election. And, we may have a close race in 2008. The margin in the 2000 presidential election was four electoral votes; Bush received 271 to 267 for former Vice President Al Gore.

California's congressional districts are heavily gerrymandered to favor one party or the other. Twenty are drawn to be safely Republican, and Bush carried all 20 of these districts in 2004, plus two Democratic districts. In 2004 -- under the proposed initiative -- California would have given Bush 22 more electoral votes and Kerry 22 fewer electoral votes.

In 2004, Bush won with 286 electoral votes to 252 for Kerry. But Bush won by carrying pivotal Ohio with its 21 electoral votes. Had Kerry won Ohio he would have had 273 electoral votes to 265 for Bush, and Kerry would be sitting in the White House now. But under the initiative, Bush could have lost Ohio and still won the election because he would have garnered 22 of California's 55 electoral votes by winning in 22 congressional districts.

The lesson is clear. If California divvies up it electoral votes by congressional district, the Democrats will find it far more difficult to win the presidency. That's why this proposal is already raising huge alarms in Democratic circles, with accusations that Republicans are trying a power grab.

Democrats can count. And this proposal, in effect, creates a new state the size of Ohio that would award its electoral votes to a Republican candidate. And it subtracts from the Democratic electoral tally the number of votes equal to Minnesota and Wisconsin combined.

And yet Republicans have a sound public policy argument for this change. It employs the usual Democratic arguments of one-person one-vote. Is it fair that 5.5 million Californians who voted for Bush receive no representation among California's 55 electors, and Kerry who got just 1.2 million more votes than Bush gets all 55 of California's electoral votes?

The distribution of electoral votes has no relationship to how people actually vote and defies the long-held Supreme Court dictum that one person's vote should be the equal to another person's vote. Kerry received 184,087 popular votes in Vermont, and received three electoral votes; Bush received 147,947 popular votes in Wyoming and got three electoral votes. But Bush got 5.5 million popular votes in California and no electoral votes; Kerry received 2.8 million popular votes in Texas and no electoral votes.

In just these two states, the votes of 8.3 million citizens were completely worthless.

About the writer:

• Tony Quinn is co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan analysis of legislative and congressional elections.