A New York Times article out yesterday fills in some of the blanks about the newly revived effort to steal 20+ of California's electoral votes for the Republican next year and if the enthusiasm of the Republicans quoted in the article is to be believed, this thing may be on track to making it on the June 2008 ballot.

Though the financing remains uncertain, the measure's leaders said Friday that they were confident they would get the signatures required by the Nov. 29 deadline to qualify the initiative for a statewide vote next June. [...]

Under state law, backers of the initiative must collect the signatures of roughly 400,000 registered voters; supporters said they intended to collect 675,000 signatures to make sure enough of them actually qualified.

"At the pace we're on, I think we'll be done mid-November," said Michael Arno, who is leading a professional signature-gathering effort.

"I have 300,000 signatures in hand and 100,000 in the pipeline," Mr. Arno said, adding that he believed another 100,000 might have been gathered by others.

The article cites the fundraising goal of $2 million to complete the signature gathering, which is based on an estimated 600,000 signatures at $3.75 per each signature gathered (gatherers may be either paid or volunteer but are required to disclose which they are if asked.) This article confirms that southern California GOP congressman and recall funder Darrell Issa donated $50,000 to the effort, a far cry from the millions he put into the recall petition campaign. The article also confirms that they're "behind" on their fundraising. Signature gathering guru Michael Arno has reportedly "agreed to take less" than $3.75/signature to "conserve cash." Gee, what a guy. So how can they be so confident that they'll have the signatures required without the money to complete the process? It's a bit mysterious but the answer may lie in a direct mail piece I received the other day from the California Republican Party; it contained the dirty trick initiative itself.

Yes, it appears that the CRP is sending the ballot initiative petition out to every person on the party's mailing list (I'm on there because I attended their convention last year as sort of a mole...) to get people to sign the petition and become volunteer circulators themselves by getting their family and friends to sign as well. While this method is bound to result in a ton of invalid signatures and raises all sorts of questions about the party working so closely in tandem with an initiative signature gathering campaign, this just might explain the backers' confidence that they'll have the signatures without having to pay  the full $3.75 per. I'm going to do more digging on this but in the meantime, the letter that accompanies the petition is certainly enlightening as to the framing the GOP is using to push this initiative:

Currently, our state has a winner-take-all process in terms of determining which presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, receives California's 55 electoral votes.

But, this just is not fair. It's time to make California Count in Presidential elections! [...]

In 2004 5.5 million Californians voted for President Bush, and he won 22 of the 53 congressional districts in our state. But due to the way the current process is structured, these votes did not count since he did not win the overall popular vote...As a result, our concerns and issues have not always been heard by the candidates.

(emphasis theirs)

It goes on to say that the new proposed way of allocating EVs would be the fair way because it would

...give weight to the size and diversity of our great state.

Of course, a bullshit appeal to fairness isn't their only tactic:

Hillary Clinton has taken a strong lead in oposing this effort to make California count in Presidential elections. But she must not be allowed to dictate what California does. California should do what's best for California.

In reality, she has not taken a lead role, supporters of hers have, but that's beside the point. The GOP sees Hillary Clinton as a rallying cry and this issue is no different. As I said before, this strategy raises many questions, which I intend to research more fully in the next couple of days. Again, if the confidence the CA GOP is exhibiting is real, we may have a real fight on our hands to keep this off the ballot.

Please help the CA netroots effort to keep it off, led by my colleagues at the Courage Campaign in any way you can over at Act Blue and you can get more information at NoDirtyTricks.com. As I've written before, if this does get on the ballot, it will require millions of dollars to defeat, in fact the CA GOP is counting on it.