From the LA Times:

SACRAMENTO -- As deadlines came and went, backers of an initiative that could affect the 2008 presidential election continued struggling Friday to gather enough signatures to place the measure before voters.

Don't get too excited though, because the group that's collecting the signatures vows to keep working through the weekend so that they could deliver the sigs by wid-week.

Did that read strange?  Well, once again, sometimes rules are just meant to be suggestions:

Initiative organizers often miss deadlines and still qualify their measures, but pushing the target date is risky. Once signatures are submitted, local elections authorities must verify them and send them to the secretary of state, who certifies the measure for the ballot.

On the other hand, their numbers do not look to be a sure bet, and this is where you come in again.

A top official of the effort to steal up to 20 electoral votes in California sent out an email to supporters of the Rudy Giuliani campaign asking them to sign petitions to get the measure on the ballot.  This could be a violation of federal election law, which prohibits coordination between Presidential campaigns and separate ballot issues.  Top of the Ticket has the latest.

The missive, obtained by The Times' Dan Morain, is addressed, "Hello Fellow Rudy Supporter!" Its author, Tony Andrade, is a Republican activist who helped draft the electoral college initiative. Previously, he was among those who helped place the ultimately successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis on the ballot in 2003 [...]

Chris Lehane, a Democratic activist who is organizing the campaign to block the measure, said of the Andrade e-mail: “It sounds like something that the Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice will be very interested in seeing.”

Like a bad horror movie, it's back.

Veteran GOP consultants said Monday that they were relaunching a drive to change the way California allocates its electoral college votes, aimed at helping the 2008 Republican presidential nominee capture the White House.

Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature-gathering effort.

"Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot," said Gilliard, who played a key role in getting the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis onto the 2003 ballot.

The proposed initiative would change California's method of allocating its 55 electoral votes from a winner-take-all basis, which favors Democrats, to a congressional district-based approach. Republicans hold 19 congressional seats, so presumably the GOP nominee could win a similar number of electoral votes.

The effort stalled last month when its original organizers failed to raise the $2 million needed to place the initiative on the June ballot.

It seems Republicans are increasingly desperate about their 2008 chances, given their vows to spend big bucks to try and game the system to their advantage.

Just like your stereotypical undead movie monster, the proposed ballot initiative to change the allocation of California's electoral votes seems to have returned from the grave, poised to wreak havoc once again.

Despite the numerous reports from four weeks ago that the backers of the initiative were abandoning their effort once it was revealed that they were having problems raising money for the signature drive (and that what little there was coming from a sketchy source), some of the warier amongst us warned that there was always the possibility that the measure could be revived if a major financial backer could be located.

And guess what?  As-yet unnamed Republican "reformers" have stepped forward to do just that.  More details below the fold.

Remember the Dirty Trick Initiative?  The one the bad guys gave up on?  

For those who don't remember: CA's 55 electoral votes are a winner-take-all proposition, like most states.  This initiative would assign 2 votes to the winner of the state, plus one vote to the winner of each Congressional district.  That would be an immediate swing of 20 votes, and that's the ballgame.  Killing it was a huge win.

It's back.

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article explaining how the Democrats killed the GOP plan to change the way California Electoral College votes are distributed -- from winner-take-all to proportional.  And since the article mentions (briefly) Daily Kos, I thought it was worth pimping.

Frank Russo has so far had the best coverage of Rudy Giuliani's involvement in the since-imploded Dirty Tricks campaign to steal a bunch of California's electoral votes.  It appears that practically everyone associated with this campaign had a tie to Rudy Giuliani in some form or another.  We already knew that the lone funder, laundered through a hastily assembled LLC in Missouri called "Take Initiative America," was actually the chair of Giuliani's northeast funding operation named Paul Singer.  What we didn't know was that this laundering, crafted to skirt the strict election laws in California, was part of a pattern of interlocking front groups that would hide who was behind this whole thing - perhaps even the candidate himself.  This quote is from Chris Lehane, who was running the opposition to the Dirty Tricks campaign and was in a position to delve pretty deeply into what was going on here.  

Hello everyone,
Welcome to the roundup of this weeks Headzup Cartoons.
As the creator of these cartoons, I appreciate your watching & your comments.  
And now, onto the roundup!

By now, you've hopefully heard about the GOP plot to steal the 2008 election by divvying up California's electoral votes by Congressional district, thus giving the GOP candidate about 20 or so electoral votes from our 55, thanks to the gerrymandered "safe" Republican districts.

Well, the latest Rasmussen poll just released this morning has some good news regarding the dirty GOP ballot initiative.

See below the fold....

This will be brief (though perhaps updated), to beat the midnight posting deadline.

I'd like to recommend that people read this article in Slate which addresses the Constitutionality of the so-called "Presidential Election Reform Act" Act that its proponents are trying to get onto the ballot during what should be a quiet June non-Presidential primary.

We've discussed this issue here many times -- including in diaries about the Courage Campaign, which dday, juls, hekebolos and others have put together to combat this initiative  -- but I for one have not developed enough expertise to comment on it, nor have I noticed anyone else who could say anything definitive.

The Slate article and the places to which it links look pretty definitive: they can't do it.

(cross-posted on Calitics)

On August 23, Gov. Schwarzenegger said:

I haven't looked at the language and I'm not saying I'm against it or I'm for it or anything.

Well, now he has 2,148 opportunities to read the thing and say whether he is for it or against the dirty trick initiative.  Thanks to you.

We asked the blogosphere and thousands of Courage Campaign members to send him a copy and boy did you deliver.  I had to get my weightlifter friend to help me cary them in to the Governor's office.  Mind you it is about 100 degrees in Sacramento today.