The Republican Plan for California's Electoral Votes

The other day I had the story about the California Dem plan to ignore the electoral college and give all the states votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide. There's also a Republican plan which is driving the Dem's desperation:

(CNN) — California voters are inclined to support a proposed ballot measure that Democratic leaders fear could doom the party's chances of winning back the White House in 2008 by giving Republicans a chunk of the state's large block of Electoral College votes, according to results of a poll released this week.

By a margin of 47 percent to 35 percent, the Field Poll found voters supported a GOP-inspired ballot measure replacing the state's winner-take-all method for awarding electoral votes with a system that would give one vote to the candidate who won the most votes in each of the state's 53 congressional districts and two votes to the statewide winner.

Had that system been in place in 2004, President Bush, who lost California to the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, would still have captured 22 of the state's 55 electoral votes. Under the winner-take-all system, Kerry got them all.

The proposed change would be damaging to Democrats, who have come to rely on California's block of votes — the largest haul available in any state — as part of their arithmetic to get to an Electoral College majority. For instance, in 2004, if Bush had taken those 22 California electoral votes, he would not have needed to carry the pivotal state of Ohio, with 20 electoral votes, to go over the top.

This is a plan that I favor, though I'd prefer to see it enacted nationwide and not just in one large state (although if the plan keeps Hillary Clinton or any other Dem out of the White House, I could be happy with it even if it's just in California).