Back in December, I announced with some caution that the CA Dirty Tricks Initiative had been "delayed." Indeed, the CA right-wing's best bet at passage, i.e. getting on the June ballot, was not going to happen, but I still was taking nothing for granted. As I wrote at the time:

...if we've learned one thing about right-wing dirty tricksters, it's that they're not to be underestimated. So chalk this up as one battle won, but not yet the war. I expect we'll see plenty of dirty tricks to come.

Well, we just won the war.

Proponents of a controversial proposed ballot measure that would have reallocated California's electoral college votes by congressional district -- instead of the current winner-take-all system -- have abandoned their effort.

"It's not going to make the ballot this year," said David Gilliard, a Republican political strategist organizing the campaign. "The money never materialized to put it on the ballot."

The deadline to get the signatures in to the Secretary of State's office was Monday and let's just say they didn't. It's sort of an anti-climactic end to what could have been a dramatic twist in this already dramatic election season but the Republicans saw the writing on the wall; with the excitement generated by the Democratic candidates, no way they'd ever pass this thing in California on the November ballot.

This is great news and a real testament to the grassroots/netroots rapid response instigated by my friends at The Courage Campaign (for whom I do part time work.) Their No Dirty Tricks campaign should really serve as a model for how local netroots working outside of the establishment party system can provide much needed pushback to the right-wing dirty trick machine that used to be so effective. Used to be. Money drying up...signature gathering falling short...it seems the Republicans are slowly realizing that, thanks to the proliferation of organizations like The Courage Campaign, these tactics are simply no longer viable.

Chalk another one up for the good guys.

There's more...

The right-wingers pushing the Dirty Tricks initiative here in California are desperate. They've been making a final fundraising and signature gathering push over the past month in hopes of getting the initiative, which, if passed, would deliver 20 or so of California's 55 electoral votes to the Republican candidate, onto the June 2008 ballot. But looks like it's not going quite as planned.

On Saturday, the LA Times reported that they had missed a deadline set by the Secretary of State for turning in signatures because they still lacked enough money to pay all of their signature gatherers and they didn't want to turn in fewer than 700,000 or so for fear that the final count would result in fewer than the 434,000 valid signatures required by law. The actual deadline to qualify for the ballot is January 24 but now that they've missed their submission date, as yesterday's Sacramento Bee explains (h/t calitics):

...backers of an initiative to change how California's electoral votes are counted are at risk of missing the June ballot because it will be difficult to finish counting signatures by a state deadline next month.

Of course, if they do miss the June ballot deadline, they'll still shoot for the November ballot, but in the meantime they're in desperation mode and the tricks they've been resorting to in order to qualify for June have gotten dirtier and dirtier.

As I wrote last week, my colleagues at The Courage Campaign (for whom I do part-time work) caught some Dirty Tricks signature gatherers on tape luring unsuspecting signers with a petition funding children's cancer research. As Courage's intrepid investigative blogger Erik Love reported at the time:

the petitioners said that their petition would "help children with cancer," and then proceeded to instruct well-meaning students to sign several petitions that were attached together on a single clipboard.  The petitioners clearly tried to obscure the language on the petitions, using a rubber band to make it difficult for anyone signing to read beyond the first page.  When pressed, the petitioners described some of the other issues (besides curing cancer) they were advocating, but their descriptions of the petition language on eminent domain and presidential election reform was unclear or inaccurate.

Based on the video footage Erik took, Courage Campaign has requested a formal investigation into the right-wingers' signature gathering practices and now CBS news has picked up the story using the actual footage Erik took.

Watch the report below:

This is a great example of the local netroots taking a local story and pushing it up, not only through the netroots but into traditional media and having a real world impact. This is really at the heart of the power and influence of the netroots. Too bad we weren't around to push back against the recall back in 2003. Of course, we haven't won yet. The Courage Campaign will continue to fight this right-wing power grab (is there any other kind?) and you can join the effort over at NoDirtyTricks.com or help build the CA progressive infrastructure by giving a little to them over at ActBlue.

There's more...