The Republican Party’s effort to unilaterally award itself with 20 of California’s 55 Electoral College votes next year has failed to reach its fundraising goals for a second time:

Ballot initiatives tend to fail if California voters suspect the proposition has a hidden agenda.

A proposed initiative that drew national attention for its potential to affect next year’s presidential election will not appear on the June ballot, organizers said Thursday.

Republican backers of the measure, which could have tilted the presidential contest toward the GOP nominee by changing how California awards electoral votes, conceded that they were unable to raise sufficient funds.

Dave Gilliard, the manager of the current campaign, expressed bewilderment over the fact that more GOP fatcats did not pour money into the campaign.

“I was surprised that more people that finance these types of efforts didn’t step forward…We had strong supporters and good supporters but didn’t come anywhere close to making the budget,” Gilliard told the Los Angeles Times.

Gilliard’s “surprise” is itself surprising. GOP big money donors know, just as certainly Gilliard must know, that ballot initiatives tend to fail if California voters suspect the proposition has a hidden agenda.

The stated intent of Gilliard’s initiative was to make the California system “fair.” In fact, the real purpose was to give about 40 percent of the state’s Electoral College votes to the 2008 Republican nominee.

In October, a similar measure failed when the campaign manager discovered that its sole donation had been laundered through a front group to disguise the donor’s identity as a campaign chair and fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.