The Cal Counts Initiative; even if it gets on the Ballot and Passes, is it Constitutional?

The Flash Report cites a new Survey USA poll that shows support for changing California’s winner take all delegates for the presidential election to a delegate-by-congressional district approach that would effectively give a Republican candidate the another Ohio in the 2008 race. 

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll taken in September that spelled out what the CalCounts initiative is really supposed to do showed overwhelming disfavor of the measure by California voters.

But even if Cal Counts can raise enough money to keep this initiative afloay, get in on the June 2008 ballot, and get it passed by voters, it might all be unconstitutional.

Let’s turn the wayback machine on for the 2000 Bush v. Gore court case. The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, together with Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, wrote an opinion that Article II of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from involving entities other than their respective state legislatures in determining the manner in which the state chooses its electors to the Electoral College. So even if the voters vote for a change, its really the responsibility of the California state legislature, which has decided on the winner-take-all method.

The measure is struggling to gain signatures and documented deceptive practices caught on tape may doom it yet.