It’s relatively quiet these days in terms of political news in California… which means that the brawl over a ballot initiative to rejigger the awarding of electoral votes has the stage all to itself.

Today, Democrats upped the ante by filing another formal complaint against the Republican-led campaign.

Last week, we learned that the proposed initiative to end the “winner take all” system of awarding California’s 55 electoral votes had been resuscitated. A new team of GOP campaign consultants, presumably infused with as much as $3 million in cash, is now quickly trying to gather enough signatures to place the measure on next June’s statewide ballot. They may have as little as two weeks left to do so.

And as Democrats made clear a few days ago, they’re ready to rumble.

This afternoon, Dems filed a new complaint with both the Federal Elections Commission alleging possible violations of federal election laws. Specifically, the Democrats allege that there’s a formal connection between the campaign of Rudy Giuliani and the initiative, and therefore contributions to the effort must be subject to federal campaign contribution limits (which are much more strict than those allowed under California election laws).

The accusations hinge on the fact that several people who appear to be involved with the initiative campaign have, at some point, had ties with the Giuliani campaign. And the Dems howled even louder at the end of last week, when an e-mail surfaced that sounded as though it, too, was sparked by those close to Hizzoner’s presidential campaign.

“Once again, all roads lead back to the Giuliani campaign,” Democratic strategist Chris Lehane told reporters today.

But the initiative’s campaign team denies the accusations. “It’s absolutely untrue,” said consultant Chris Wysocki. “We have not had any communication with the Giuliani campaign. We have not had any communication with any presidential campaign.”

Formal investigations by federal elections officials don’t often happen overnight, so don’t expect an answer from the FEC in the near future. The next big piece of information in this saga could come later this week; that’s when the initiative campaign’s first campaign finance documents could be made public — the first chance to actually see who’s ponying up the cash to get the measure on the ballot.