Charles "Chep" Hurth III is an obscure city attorney in a tiny Missouri town. He's also the point man for the Republican effort to change the way California's electoral votes are apportioned to presidential candidates, a move that some say could swing the 2008 election to the GOP.

Hurth wasn't so obscure a decade ago, as Carla Marinucci reports in today's San Francisco Chronicle. He was in national headlines after a young woman dragged him into court, charging that he bit her on the butt in a bar.

Marinucci writes: "Hurth, then a third-year law student at St. Louis University, was taken to court by a young woman who said he grabbed her in a bar and bit her on the buttocks so hard she required medical attention -- then laughed and high-fived his friends.

"Hurth testified that he had told her she should take it as a compliment.

"The female attorney sued him and took something else instead -- a jury's award of $27,500 for damages."
Hurth is the registered agent for Take Initiative America, a tax-exempt group apparently formed specifically to place the so-called Presidential Election Reform Act on California's June ballot. The group donated $175,000 to fund the effort.

The Electoral College system needs changing, no doubt. Better yet, we should junk it in favor of a straightforward popular vote for president. But this cheesy attempt to rejigger the outcome only in California -- and not in any Republican-dominated states -- is a transparent fraud. About what you'd expect from people who think it's OK to bite a stranger in the butt.