Electoral College flunks fairness test
in big states
Scott MacKay
The Providence Journal
October 3, 2004
The
Constitution gives voters in small states more clout
It
isn't considered diplomatic to say that a vote in Rhode Island
doesn't count as one in Ohio.
But
Sen. Lincoln Chafee said as much two weeks ago at an environmental
forum in Providence. Chalk it up to the Electoral College, the 18th
century system that decides presidential elections.
As
the 2004 vote approaches, the votes of New Englanders are important
mostly because if the six states vote as a bloc for Massachusetts
Sen. John Kerry, they would erase the advantage President Bush would
receive for winning his home state of Texas.
Texas
has 34 electoral votes, the same as the six New England states. As
the weeks dwindle to the Nov. 2 election, it will be such electoral
vote considerations that will dominate the strategies of the Bush
and Kerry campaigns.
About
105 million Americans voted in the 2000 presidential election, but
the real contest then, as now, is the race to capture 270 electoral
votes, a majority of the 538 awarded state-by-state.
It
is the Electoral College that governs presidential elections. It:
Makes
the presidential campaigns focus on the so-called-swing or
battleground states that will make-or-break the race for Electoral
College votes. This means there is virtually no campaign in states
seen as overwhelmingly pro-Kerry or pro-Bush, such as Massachusetts
and Rhode Island for Kerry and Texas and Utah for Mr. Bush.
Means
some voters matter more than others. The Electoral College gives
voters in small states -- which tend to have less racially and
ethnically diverse populations -- more say in choosing a president
than voters in larger, more diverse states. Gives the 22 smallest
states, which together have less than California's population,
nearly twice its 55 electoral votes.
Establishes
the two-party system in the United States and makes it almost
impossible for a third-party candidate to win the White House.
IT
IS ONE of the ironies of the 21st century that presidential
elections in an Internet era can be decided by the Electoral
College, a system set up in the 1780s by men who traveled on
horseback and by clipper ship.
To
understand how this relic of the nation's birth wields so much power
today, we take you back to 1789 and the system erected by the
Founding Fathers (there were no founding mothers; women could not
vote) for choosing a president.
First,
the early leaders of the country did not have much respect for
average citizens. "They really didn't trust ordinary
folks,"' says Darrell West, a political science professor at
Brown University.
So
they restricted voting to white males who owned property. And they
only allowed those voters to select one part of the federal
government -- the U.S. House of Representatives.
U.S.
senators were chosen by state legislatures until 1913, when
Progressive Era agitation led to a constitutional amendment that
provided direct election of senators.
And
they established the Electoral College to pick the president, which
in those days was made up of community and political leaders in each
state.
And
then they required presidential candidates to receive a majority of
the electoral votes.
In
this way, the founders believed, they would eliminate regional
favorites by forcing candidates to appeal to a coalition of states,
thus weaving together a young nation.
THE
ELECTORAL COLLEGE sounds complicated and arcane -- the
sleep-inducing chapter from the Political Science 101 textbook --
but in the way it has evolved over the years, it is fairly easy to
understand.
First,
remember that each state's electoral vote is equal to its number of
U.S. senators added to its members of the House of Representatives.
Rhode Island, for example, has two senators and two representatives
and thus has four electoral votes. Massachusetts, with 10
representatives and two senators, gets 12.
In
almost every state, electoral votes are awarded on a winner-take-all
basis; the candidate who gets the most popular votes wins all the
electoral votes. The candidate who wins Rhode Island -- whether he
wins the state by one vote or 100,000 -- gets all four electoral
votes.
Because
each state gets two votes for its two senators, California, with
more than 30 million residents, and Vermont, with about 600,000 each
start with two electoral votes.
The
rest of the electoral votes are determined by the number of
representatives a state has, which is decided by the size of a
state's population, as measured every 10 years by the Census Bureau.
In
this example, California with 50 times the population of Vermont has
just 18 times as many votes in the Electoral College.
But
even in the House there is some inequality, because each small state
gets at least one representative no matter how many people live
there, even if the population is not large enough for a House
district.
THE
ELECTORAL College may seem like an anachronism, but it worked
without incident or fanfare from 1888 to 2000, through two world
wars, the Depression, the Korean and Vietnam wars and the social
upheavals wrought by the Civil Rights and Women's movements. There
was no controversy because the Electoral College mirrored the
popular vote winner.
Then
came the 2000 election, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote
by more than 500,000 votes but lost the electoral count to
Republican George W. Bush after the intervention of the U.S. Supreme
Court.
To
change the system nationally would be daunting; it would require a
constitutional amendment and ratification by three-fourths of the
states. Just 13 small states could block any change.
YET,
CHANGE is bubbling up from the states; Colorado is holding a
closely-watched referendum this election that would dump the
winner-take-all approach and award that state's electoral votes
proportionally as a percentage of the statewide presidential vote.
States
are allowed to apportion electoral votes proportionally if they
choose to.
The
winner-take all nature of the Electoral College means this year that
candidates do not campaign in the nation's largest cities -- Los
Angeles, New York or Chicago. That is because California, New York
and Illinois are seen as Democratic and Kerry strongholds.
Candidates
also avoid Houston, Tulsa and Salt Lake City, because Texas, Utah
and Oklahoma are viewed as locks for Mr. Bush.
PRESIDENTIAL
campaigns are reduced to the states where public opinion polls and
historical voting results show the Kerry-Bush joust as competitive.
At this point, about 14 states are in play, a figure than can shift
with changes in voter perception of candidates, as measured by
polls.
Republican
bastions tend to be places with older, whiter populations, in the
Rockies and the Plains states. Republicans also dominate in the
South, where white voters have shifted to the GOP in national
elections since the Democrats became the party of civil rights in
the 1960s.
"The
Republicans have become the old white guys party," says
Garrison Nelson, the political science professor at the University
of Vermont. "You can pretty much see that in who they
nominate."
The
GOP has never had anyone who was not a Protestant male on its
presidential ticket since 1964, when U.S. Rep. William Miller of New
York, a Roman Catholic, was chosen.
By
contrast, the Democratic Party had its first Catholic nominee in
1928 -- former New York Gov. Al Smith -- and nominated the only
Catholic elected president -- John F. Kennedy in 1960. Democrats
have also had a women -- U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York in
1984, and a Jew, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman in 2000, as
vice-presidential candidates.
YET,
MARC GENEST, political science professor at the University of Rhode
Island, sees "Democratic whining" in this view. A good
part of the Republican hold on the Electoral College is based on
population shifts from the older industrial states of the
Alleghenies [mountains] and the Midwest, such as Michigan and
Pennsylvania, to the such south and southwestern states as Texas and
Florida.
Because
Americans move to where jobs are plentiful and because political
opinions change, the Electoral College advantage is fluid, shifting
over time. New England once preferred Republicans, but in the last
three presidential elections the region has voted solidly
Democratic, except for New Hampshire's support of Bush in 2000. Utah
was once Democratic; it is now Republican.
"The
electoral college is not set in stone; there have been many changes
over the years," says Genest. "Not all the small states
are for Bush; look at Rhode Island and Vermont."
FROM
INSIDE a campaign, the Electoral College calculus dictates pretty
much everything, from deciding where a candidate stumps to money
spent on TV commercials and lawn signs, says Tad Devine, who has a
major voice in deciding state-by-state strategy for Kerry.
The
Kerry and Bush campaigns use elaborate computer models which include
such variables as historic voting figures, polling results and
population data to help determine where to send candidates and
money. The campaigns rank the states in order of support: Rhode
Island and Massachusetts are at the top of Kerry's list Devine says.
"The
most precious thing you have to consider is the candidate's schedule
and time," says Devine.
POLLS
SHOW a close Bush-Kerry race in New Hampshire, the only New England
state considered to be a true battleground. Devine says the Kerry
campaign is confident of a victory, but cannot take it for granted;
New Hampshire is the most Republican state in New England; its
governor, U.S. senator and two U.S. House members are all
Republicans and about 75 percent of the legislature is in GOP hands.
So
New Hampshire voters can expect to see Kerry and probably Democratic
vice-presidential aspirant North Carolina Sen. John Edwards before
the Nov. 2 election; voters in Rhode Island and Massachussetts
likely won't. Mr. Bush too, is taking New Hampshire seriously, the
president campaigned in New Hampshire last Friday, accompanied by
Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is popular in the state.
In
2000, Mr. Bush took New Hampshire by about 7,000 votes out of almost
600,000 cast in a state where third-party candidate Ralph Nader
collected about 22,000 votes.
AS
OF YESTERDAY, Kerry on was on the air with TV commercials in 14
states, about the same as Mr. Bush. The key battleground states
haven't changed much since the beginning of the campaign, with both
the Kerry and Bush camps focused on Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Iowa,
Nevada, Virginia, Colorado and Arizona.
Political
partisans in Rhode Island and Massachusetts are participating in the
presidential election -- but not in their home states.
"Despite
popular belief, there are lots of Republicans in Rhode Island who
want to help President Bush's campaign," says Particia Morgan,
Rhode Island state Republican chairwoman.
So
the state GOP is organizing weekend bus trips to New Hampshire to
help canvass voters and work telephone banks, says Richard Eannarino,
a GOP activist from Jamestown who is recruiting volunteers for a
trip on Oct. 16.
"We're
going to stay overnight and do whatever they need us to do,"
said Eannarino.
Democrats,
who have a larger volunteer base in Rhode Island are doing the same
thing every weekend. College students from the state's campuses have
been fertile ground for Kerry volunteers, says Seth Magaziner,
president of the Brown University College Democrats.
"It
is just Electoral College reality," says Kevin Conroy, Kerry's
Rhode Island coordinator. "We'll be sending volunteers up to
New Hampshire right up until Election Day."
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