FLASHREPORT

Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, knows a trap when he sees one. The Democratic state legislature in North Carolina was on a fast track to pass a bill that would have ended the practice of apportioning all that state's Electoral College votes to the statewide winner. Instead, the winner of each of its 13 Congressional districts would win one electoral vote, while the remaining two (representing the state's two U.S. Senate seats) would go to the statewide winner. In 2004, under the proposed formula, John Kerry would have won three electoral votes from North Carolina rather than zero. Only the small states of Maine and Nebraska currently apportion their electoral votes in such a manner.

The North Carolina Senate had already approved the measure and the State House was within hours of sending the bill to Democratic Gov. Mike Easley's desk when Dr. Dean called and urgently prescribed the patient's death. "He said the party had suddenly learned a similar measure was being proposed by Republicans in California and that could mean over 20 electoral college votes in that state going to the GOP," one Democratic state legislative staffer told me. "That meant [Democrats] would be tagged as hypocrites if we proceeded to do the same idea in North Carolina and then opposed it in California."

Indeed, last month Thomas W. Hiltachk, a Republican attorney in Sacramento who is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal lawyer on election matters, filed a proposed initiative to allocate the state's Electoral College votes precisely as Democrats had planned to do in North Carolina. The difference is that California is such a megastate that even though President Bush lost statewide in 2004 by 10 percentage points, he nonetheless won a majority in 22 Congressional districts. Hendrik Hertzberg, a liberal New Yorker magazine columnist, says that if voters were to approve the initiative in California's June primary next year, it would represent an "unearned, Ohio-size gift of electoral votes" to next year's GOP nominee. Democratic strategist Chris Lehane says that if the rule were adopted, it would "virtually guarantee that a Republican wins the White House in 2008."

No one knows if Republicans will invest the $1 million it would take to qualify such a measure for the California ballot, much less the millions it would take to withstand the Democratic onslaught against it. Democrats worry that the measure has the appearance of creating more fairness than the current winner-take-all formula -- which is precisely why they thought they could get away with the ploy in North Carolina. They also worry that in a low-turnout primary in which only local offices are on the ballot (California's presidential primary has been moved to Feb. 5), the measure just might pass.

If the proposal does appear on the June ballot, expect the mother of all battles. It's not too much to say next year's entire presidential race could be played out in the California ballot battle even before the two parties' candidates are officially nominated at their respective conventions. And you thought the presidential campaign process was already front-loaded?