SACRAMENTO — As deadlines came and went, backers of an initiative that could affect the 2008 presidential election continued struggling Friday to gather enough signatures to place the measure before voters.
Organizers had set this week as a deadline for wrapping up their petition drive, but said they had not raised the roughly $2 million needed to pay petition circulators. Secretary of State Debra Bowen had recommended a deadline of Nov. 29.
Campaign manager Dave Gilliard said that agents would work through the weekend to obtain the 434,000 valid signatures required to put the Electoral College initiative on next June's ballot and that he expected to submit the names by midweek.
Gilliard was less than certain that he would reach his goal of 700,000 names, a number allowing leeway for signatures that might be disqualified.
"We won't know until they're collected," he said.
The proposed initiative would alter California's winner-take-all system of awarding its 55 electoral votes. Instead, electors would be allocated based on which candidate captured majorities in individual congressional districts.
That could help the eventual Republican presidential nominee in California. With Republicans holding 19 congressional seats, the GOP nominee would presumably win at least that many districts, giving the candidate 19 electoral votes, almost as many as Ohio has.
In 2004, President Bush, a Republican, won majorities in 22 congressional districts, despite losing to Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry in California 44.4% to 55.4%.
If California altered its Election Code to count electoral votes by congressional district, the state would join just two others using that method: Maine and Nebraska, which combined have nine electoral votes.
Gilliard said Friday that he was unsure whether the campaign would reach its fund-raising goal.
Tapping some Republican stalwarts, proponents have raised more than $1 million; the actual figure won't become public for several days. But Gilliard said $200,000 to $250,000 more was needed to pay circulators for the signatures they have gathered.
"Until it is the bank, I don't want to make any pronouncements," he said.
Initiative organizers often miss deadlines and still qualify their measures, but pushing the target date is risky. Once signatures are submitted, local elections authorities must verify them and send them to the secretary of state, who certifies the measure for the ballot.
