San Francisco -- Democratic Party activists said Monday that they have filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission charging connections between backers of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and a GOP-supported ballot measure that could have changed California's winner-take-all electoral college system to benefit Republican candidates.
James Harrison, an attorney for Californians for Fair Election Reform, the Democratic group, said the organization asked the commission to refer the matter to the Department of Justice to investigate possible criminal violations of federal election law....
The proposed ballot measure, called the Presidential Election Reform Act, would have required California's 55 Electoral College votes to go to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district rather than the statewide winner. Political analysts said such a change could have meant that California, a state that has backed Democratic presidential candidates since 1992, could have provided Republicans with at least 20 electoral votes - almost as many as states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The Chronicle reported last week that Missouri attorney Charles Hurtt III was the legal agent for a tax-exempt corporation called Take Initiative America that provided the lone donation - $175,000 - to try to qualify the measure for the California ballot. But after Hurtt and his organization would not reveal the source of their money, Democrats charged that the GOP-backed effort smacked of money laundering and said numerous links existed between the ballot effort and the Giuliani campaign....
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Democrats said they are pursuing the complaint with the Federal Election Commission to send a message to any Republicans who might consider reviving the measure.
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