Background
The initiative, No. 07-0032, was proposed by a group called Californians for Equal Representation, originally for placement on California's June 3, 2008, primary election ballot. The group's address was apparently the offices of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, a law firm that also has represented the California Republican Party in some matters, and whose senior partner, Charles H. Bell Jr., serves as General Counsel to the California Republican Party. The initiative's sponsors sought to change the way California's presidential electoral votes are distributed.
Currently, as in most states, California's votes in the electoral college are distributed in a winner-take-all manner; whichever presidential candidate wins the state's popular vote wins all 55 of the state's electoral votes. Under Initiative No. 07-0032, the state's electoral votes would instead have been awarded by Congressional district; the candidate who won a Congressional district's popular vote for president would have won an electoral vote representing that district, and the winner of the most electoral votes statewide would have won an additional two votes.
The proposed referendum's scheme is known as the District Method (a.k.a. the Maine-Nebraska Method), which describes the process by which voters in each of the state's congressional districts select a single elector, with the two remaining electors being selected by the aggregate popular vote of the entire state. Under the District Method, a State's electoral votes can be split among two or more candidates, just as a state's congressional delegation can be split among multiple political parties.
As of 2008, Nebraska and Maine are the only states using the District Method of distributing electoral votes. Maine started using the method with the 1972 presidential elections and Nebraska started using the method during the election of 1992. The 2008 presidential elections was the first time Nebraska did not award all its electoral votes to a single candidate since switching to the District Method, as Barack Obama won the popular vote within the 2nd congressional district. Maine has yet to split its electoral votes since switching over to the District Method.
Read more about this topic: Presidential Election Reform Act
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