Oppose Initiative Effort to Skew Electoral College for Partisan Advantage

Sierra Club opposes an initiative proposal currently in circulation that would change California’s method of apportioning its electoral votes in presidential elections. The Golden State, like 47 other states, awards all of its electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote. The initiative would award one electoral vote to the leading vote-getter in each congressional district, as is currently done in Maine and Nebraska.

While reforming the electoral college is a very legitimate topic for debate at the national level, this particular initiative is a transparently partisan ploy undertaken by Republican political operatives who are trying to offset the Democratic advantage in California without doing anything to address the Republican advantage in other big winner-take-all states, like Texas. As an environmental advocacy group that engages in the electoral process, we urge our members to decline to sign petitions for the measure, which is entitled “Presidential Electors. Political Party Nomination and Election by Congressional District.”