The San Francisco Chronicle offers this update, which begins: “A major New York fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has been revealed as the money man behind a proposed ballot measure that would have changed California’s ‘winner take all’ electoral college system – and likely benefited Republicans. Paul Singer, a billionaire hedge fund executive and Giuliani policy adviser, acknowledged his role to the New York Daily News on Friday just a day after GOP organizers in California said they were folding their effort to collect signatures for the group called Californians for Equal Representation.”

Richard Briffault and I have filed these comments with the FEC in its rulemaking following Wisconsin Right to Life. Richard and I confine ourselves to the question of whether the “as applied” exemption the FEC is crafting should apply to disclosure rules. We give five reasons it should not.

Alternet offers this report.

That’s the lead story in this week’s Electionline newsletter.

The comments are here. One issue in the WRTL rulemaking is whether the as applied exemption required by the Supreme Court’s opinion in WRTL applies only to the corporate and union PAC requirement or whether it also applies to disclosure of electioneering communications (over a certain dollar threshold). You wouldn’t know it by reading the comments, because the issue of disclosure never comes up, but in advocating “Alternative 2” (comments, pages 9-10), the Center is arguing for no disclosure of the funders of issue ads that are entitled to an as applied exemption.
The adoption of Alternative 2 would be a very big deal. I’ll have more on this soon.

Jeanne Cummings writing in the Politico confirms what is now obvious: taking public financing in a presidential campaign is now seen as a sign of weakness, not strength.

The LA Times offers this must read report which concludes that the California electoral college initiative is all but dead.

Dan Tokaji has written this LA Times oped. See also this editorial in the Fort Wayne Gazette and this one in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.

CNN offers this report.

Gerry Hebert has written this oped in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The SF Chronicle offers this report, which surely has the most tantalizing election-law related lede I’ve seen in some time: “Until this week, Missouri attorney Charles ‘Chep’ Hurth III was best known for a headline-grabbing incident a decade ago in which he bit a young female law student on the butt in a bar. Now Hurth, the city attorney for New Haven, Mo. (population 1,800), is the agent for a deep-pocketed group that donated $175,000 to fund a Republican-backed effort that would reshape the landscape of presidential politics in California.”

Patt Morrison has written this LA Times column, with the subhead: “Republicans can’t carry California, so what do they want to do? Change how the state divvies up electoral votes.”

Gail Collins writes this NY Times column, which begins: “All the major Democratic candidates for president have signed a pledge promising they will only go to Florida or Michigan when they want to raise money. Among the really bad ideas in the history of the Democratic Party, this ranks somewhere between butterfly ballots and William Jennings Bryan.”

See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.