Hacking the Presidential Vote

Today, that contempt for democracy is on display again. In California right now, there is a naked, out-in-the-open ploy to rig the 2008 presidential election -- and it may succeed.

Today, the Republicans are trying to exploit the discontent with the Electoral College among Americans in a way that would rig the system in their favor. At the moment, every state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out its Electoral College votes according to a winner-takes-all system. This means that if 51 percent of people in California vote Democrat, the Democrats get 100 percent of California's electoral votes; if 51 percent of people in Texas vote Republican, the Republicans get 100 percent of Texas' electoral votes.

The Republicans want to change this -- but in only one Democrat-leaning state. California has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1988, and winning the sunny state is essential if the Democrats are going to retake the White House. So the Republicans have now begun a plan to break up California's Electoral College votes and award a huge chunk of them to their side.
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If this were being done in every state, everywhere, it would be an improvement. California's forgotten Republicans would be represented in the Electoral College, and so would Texas' forgotten Democrats. But by doing it in California alone, they are simply giving the Republicans a massive electoral gift. Suddenly it would be extremely hard for a Democrat ever to win the White House; they would need a landslide victory everywhere else to counter this vast structural imbalance against them on the West Coast.

But then constitutional scholars realized there was another way. The Constitution only requires that each state must "appoint" its presidential electors "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct." That leaves a glimmer of hope. The Campaign for a National Popular Vote is campaigning for every state simply to commit its delegates to the Electoral College to vote 100 per cent for the candidate who wins the popular vote.

This would render the Electoral College a forgotten technicality. It's very revealing that when the California state Senate voted to introduce this genuinely democratic system last year, the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed it, with the support of his party.

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