In every state except Maine and Nebraska, electoral votes are winner-take-all. It makes California, with 55 electoral votes, the nation’s top prize — it has more than one fifth of the votes needed to win the election.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter notes that a Republican-led effort in the Golden State seeks to change the system, and make it easier for the GOP candidate to take a chunk of California’s 55 votes.

Instead of laboring in vain to turn California Red, a clever lawyer for the state Republican Party thought of a gimmicky shortcut. Thomas Hiltachk, who specializes in ballot referenda that try to fool people in the titles and fine print, is sponsoring a ballot initiative for the June 3, 2008, California primary (which now falls four months after the state’s presidential primary).

The Presidential Election Reform Act would award the state’s electoral votes based on who wins each congressional district. Had this idea been in effect in 2004, Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California, about the same number awarded the winners of states like Illinois or Pennsylvania. In practical terms, adopting the initiative would mean that the Democratic candidate would likely have to win both Ohio and Florida in 2008 (instead of one or the other) to be elected.

Hiltachk, who is lying low for now, is a former campaign lawyer for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor’s office says Schwarzenegger has no position on the initiative and “had absolutely nothing to do with its development.” But whichever way Schwarzenegger goes, several GOP presidential candidates and their financial backers have already offered to help boost the plan. Just interested in good government? They’ve shown a curious lack of interest in backing the same idea in Red States.

Is the measure likely to pass? Californian Kevin Drum believes it’s unlikely, but adds that Dems will probably have to spend quite a bit to ensure its defeat (which is probably the point of the initiative).

When congressional earmarks flourished under the GOP majority, Dems set out to change how the system operated. The straightforward key to reform: transparency. If a lawmaker wants an earmark, he or she has to attach their name to the proposed project, disclose which entity will get the money, and declare that they have no financial stake in the expenditure.

The idea behind the open process was to shame lawmakers into responsible behavior — if everyone knows who wants what, there’s less chance of abuse. At least, that was the idea.

Eight months after Democrats vowed to shine light on the dark art of “earmarking” money for pet projects, many lawmakers say the new visibility has only intensified the competition for projects by letting each member see exactly how many everyone else is receiving.

So far this year, House lawmakers have put together spending bills that include almost 6,500 earmarks for almost $11 billion in local projects, only half of which the Bush administration supported. […]

Far from causing embarrassment, the new transparency has raised the value of earmarks as a measure of members’ clout. Indeed, lawmakers have often competed to have their names attached to individual earmarks and rushed to put out press releases claiming credit for the money they bring home.

This is not to say there’s been no progress. In 2005, the Republican-led spending process produced 16,000 earmarks, so there has been a 60% decrease from the GOP excesses.

But as it turns out, lawmakers like to brag about delivering for the constituents, and disclosure isn’t exactly a deterrent. As Yglesias put it, “After all, what member of congress wants it to be public knowledge that he’s in the bottom 20 quintile in terms of brining home the bacon?”

It’s sort of obvious now that he said it. But I had not quite thought of it that way. The same people now continually raising the stakes on the price of redeployment from Iraq with increasingly lurid tales of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regional implosion are pretty much exactly the same people who gamed us into this mess in the first place with another bunch of fairy tales.

Check out Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) from the GOP Iowa debate …

I know there’s something of a bipartisan Ron Paul cult springing up online. And I’m not joining. But I can see why it’s there. It’s not just a matter of whether you think he’s right on the issues. He’s pretty much the only guy on the stage who is making coherent points. I watched the debate this evening. And I was actually a bit shocked at just how weak and scattered the GOP field is — a topic I’ll discuss in more depth tomorrow morning.

Report: Top Virginia Republicans think GOP Senator John Warner will retire, leaving his seat ripe for a pickup by another man named Warner — a Democrat named Mark. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.

A kind of must read of must reads — The New Yorker‘s look inside the CIA’s “black sites.”

Yesterday evening I watched a recording of Sunday’s Republican debate in Iowa, which ran on ABC’s This Week show. All the current candidates were there, with the exception of Fred Thompson, who of course isn’t even in the race.

I learned a few things.

The first is that beside being a monumental phoney and most canned politician in history, Mitt Romney can be quite articulate and appears to be fairly knowledgeable on domestic policy questions like health care and taxation. You learn something new every day.

The second is that Rudy Giuliani seems to know next to nothing about virtually every national policy issue — ironically, given his campaign presentation, though not so odd if you consider his actual career in office, he knows more about domestic policy than foreign policy.

The third is just how weak this field really is — something I knew but hadn’t seen yet quite so up close. I can’t imagine that a sentient Republican could have watched that 90 minutes and not been at least quietly aghast. McCain, who is the only person on the stage with real national stature, comes off as a crushed man, almost pained. But the issue isn’t so much that most of them don’t seem up to the challenge of being president. It is more that the political climate and the state of the Republican party in general makes their answers to most questions either off-balance, awkward or completely incoherent.

The discussion of Iraq was the case in point. Only two guys on the stage had anything remotely coherent to say on the subject — McCain and Paul. Brownback was better than the rest, but not by that much. There was actually a relatively lengthy statement on the topic by Tommy Thompson (who’s actually supposed to be a sharp guy) that had to be one of the most nonsensical and factually-challenged things I’ve heard on the subject to date — the highlight was how Iraq has already been divided into 18 separate states so partition into three states is unworkable.

I’m not saying they’re stupid. But watching these forums, you can see that George Bush has left the ideological and policy furniture of the GOP in such a shambles that these guys can’t even find a place to stand or pivot on to an issue of choice.

Then there was the exchange on the nation’s infrastructure and how to get money to repair bridges before they fall into various lakes, rivers and bays. Giuliani, trying to prove his national conservative credentials, claimed that the best way to raise money to repair the nation’s bridges was to cut taxes. This is, I dare say, a caricature of supply-side economics, which admittedly was always something of a caricature in itself.

Romney’s moments of articulateness came in moments when he was pulling the dialog back from digressions into utter fantasy.

Mine is of course an interested view of Republican party politics. But I think I have some basic read on its relative vitality at different points in time. And this struck me as about as ragged and threadbare as I’ve seen. Watching Sunday morning’s Republican debate was like watching a car struggling to get out of idle, with each of the contenders carting out one of more cliches but unable to do much with them. Only McCain and Paul are willing to say anything about Iraq. When Giuliani gets asked about Iraq he carts out these complete non-sequiturs about how the Democrats refuse to use the phrase ‘Islamic terrorism’.

Congressman Steve Kagen sits down at TPMCafe’s Table for One to explain why he doesn’t have health care, and how every citizen can.

Along with Saturday’s big Presidential Leadership Forum at Yearly Kos in Chicago, each of the Democratic 2008 candidates held individual crowd Q&A sessions, or “breakout sessions.” We’ll be bringing you highlights of Barack Obama’s and John Edwards’ breakout sessions later in the week, but in today’s episode of TPMtv we bring you the highlights from Senator Hillary Clinton’s session …

Another priceless moment in the GOP Iowa debate was the exchange about Sen. Obama’s pledge to take military action within Pakistan if necessary to kill Osama bin Laden and other high-value al Qaeda leaders. As in other cases I noted below, it was another case of the candidates forced to tie themselves in pretzels because they’re saddled with President Bush’s legacy of a mix of rhetorical belligerence, strategic misadventure and unwillingness to actually strike at al Qaeda when given a chance.

Rudy Giuliani felt compelled to recant an earlier statement supporting Obama’s point. And the consensus from him and the rest of the candidates appeared to be that of course the US would take such an opportunity to strike (even though President Bush hadn’t) but that it was the height of naiveté to announce that we would do so. And that in any case, you shouldn’t say such a thing because of the importance of maintaining ties with our friends and allies — even ones who have our prime terrorist foes operating from on their soil.

Here you have again the perfect image of the inverted world of Bush loyalism. Any price to fight non-al Qaeda in Iraq. But don’t go overboard against real al Qaeda in Pakistan. And especially don’t get them upset by talking about it in public.

You remember a little while back we brought you the story of Florida McCain campaign co-chair, Rep. Bob Allen (R). Right on the heels of Giuliani Southern Regional Chairman David Vitter’s exposure as a serial user of prostitutes, Allen got caught in a Titusville park restroom offering to pay an undercover police officer to allow him to perform oral sex on him.

Now it turns out that Allen revealed the true reason for the alleged park-john-offer in a tape recorded statement he made just after his arrest.

“This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park,” said Allen, according to this article in the Orlando Sentinel. Allen went on to say he was afraid of becoming a “statistic.”

I guess this raises the question of whether if you thought you were about to get mugged by a group of stocky black guys, your first plan of escape would be to try to give one of them a blowjob. But I guess maybe you had to be there.

In any case, we now have this further account of the negotiation from the police report …

In a written statement released Thursday, Titusville Officer Danny Kavanaugh recalled entering the restroom twice and said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen peered over the stall door.

After peering over the stall a second time, Allen pushed open the door and joined Kavanaugh inside, the officer wrote. Allen muttered ” ‘hi,’ ” and then said, ” ‘this is kind of a public place, isn’t it,’ ” the report said.

The officer said he asked Allen about going somewhere else and that the legislator suggested going “across the bridge, it’s quieter over there.”

“Well look, man, I’m trying to make some money; you think you can hook me up with 20 bucks?” Kavanaugh asked Allen.

The officer said Allen responded, “Sure, I can do that, but this place is too public.”

Then Kavanaugh said he told Allen, “I wanna know what I gotta do for 20 bucks before we leave.’ ” He said Allen replied: “I don’t know what you’re into.”

According to Kavanaugh’s statement, the officer said, “do you want just [oral sex]?” and Allen replied, “I was thinking you would want one.”

The officer said he then asked Allen, “but you’ll still give me the 20 bucks for that . . . and that the legislator said, “yeah, I wouldn’t argue with that.”

As Allen turned and motioned for the officer to follow him to his car, Kavanaugh identified himself as a police officer by raising his shirt and exposing his badge.