Colorado eyes electoral vote splitBy Paul Nussbaum
Published September 14th 2004
Colorado voters will decide this fall whether their state should become the first to divide its electoral votes for president according to the popular vote.
The ballot initiative here is the latest attempt in a 200-year history of efforts to change the way Americans elect their president. The current Electoral College system can result - as it did in 2000 - in a president who loses the popular vote but wins the majority of electoral votes.
The Electoral College system, established in the Constitution, has been a favorite target for change over the years: More than 700 amendments have been proposed, which is more than on any other subject. And, with the emergence of the Colorado ballot initiative as a flash point, a national debate may begin again.
"Activity in the states could trigger demand nationwide," said Robert Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, a Washington research organization that supports the direct election of the president. "If it passes in Colorado, the Republicans might decide to go after California" - traditionally a lock for Democratic presidential candidates - "and that could really get things moving."
Under the Constitution, state legislatures have the power to decide how their state's presidential electors are chosen. Most states, including Colorado, have a winner-take-all system. But Colorado supporters argue that a shift to proportional allocation would more fairly represent voters' wishes and would encourage more citizens to vote.
Opponents contend that a divided electoral vote would usually result in a 5-4 outcome here, making Colorado irrelevant in presidential elections.
Two states, Maine and Nebraska, permit their electoral votes to be divided. They award two electoral votes to the winning candidate statewide and the rest (two in Maine, three in Nebraska) to the winner in each congressional district. In practice, however, neither state has split its electoral vote since adopting that system (Maine in 1972, Nebraska in 1991).
In the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore won the nationwide popular election by 540,520 votes. Republican George W. Bush won the Electoral College vote, 271-266, to take the presidency. The Constitution requires that a candidate win a majority of the electoral votes to be elected (there are 538 electoral votes, so 270 are necessary to win); otherwise, the outcome is decided by the House of Representatives.
If Colorado had divided its electoral votes in 2000, when it had eight votes, it could have changed the outcome of the election. Colorado would have gone 5-3 for Bush instead of 8-0. That would have been enough to tip the Electoral College balance in Gore's favor, 269-268, one shy of victory.
One elector, a Democrat from the District of Columbia, did not vote, as a protest against the district's lack of representation in Congress. If the election outcome had hung in the balance and that disaffected elector had thus decided to vote for the candidate of his party, Gore would have won, 270-268.
The current ballot initiative in Colorado would take effect for this year's election, if approved by voters in November.
Katy Atkinson, a Republican political consultant who is helping to lead the opposition as spokeswoman for Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea, said that Colorado should not "unilaterally disarm" in the nation's political wars.
"If it were being done nationwide, it wouldn't be quite so offensive," Atkinson said. "But we'd be the only state doing things this way. It would leave Colorado with one net electoral vote, which is not the way you want to go. We'd be less influential even than Wyoming or Rhode Island."
Julie Brown, director of Make Your Vote Count, the group that gathered the signatures to put the proposal on the Colorado ballot this year, said dividing the electoral votes was a "basic issue of fairness." She dismisses the argument about reduced relevance, saying Colorado has relatively little clout in presidential elections now.
"The state rarely gets presidential visits... . They come here to fund-raise or if they need an advantageous photo op," Brown said. "I'm more interested in real clout - how much money do we get back for schools and roads? And right now, it's not much."
In a state that leans Republican, officials of that party have attacked the measure as a ploy to steal votes from Bush. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, and state GOP chairman Ted Halaby have criticized the initiative. State Sen. Ron Tupa, a Boulder Democrat who tried unsuccessfully to change Colorado's electoral system in 2001, backs it.
The Colorado initiative comes at a time when the issue seems to be reemerging as an election issue. The New York Times, in an editorial last month, called for the abolition of the Electoral College, denouncing the system as "a ridiculous setup, which thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning, and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis."
George C. Edwards 3d, a professor at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and the author of Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America, said that in the early days of the nation, states divided their electoral votes. As parties developed, the dominant party in each state realized it could collect more votes in a winner-take-all system, Edwards said.
"The basic motivation was greed on the part of the dominant party," he said.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans favor direct election of the president (most recently, 59 percent in a December 2000 Gallup poll), while surveys of political scientists have supported the Electoral College system. Some nonpartisan voter organizations, including the League of Women Voters, also endorse direct election.
The current system "violates the one-person, one-vote rule," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters. "It's essential to representative government to get it changed." But she said she was not optimistic about any change soon.
While states are free to change the way they select electors, any move to do away with the electoral system would require a constitutional amendment. That typically requires a two-thirds majority in each house of Congress and approval by three-fourths of the states.
The ballot initiative here is the latest attempt in a 200-year history of efforts to change the way Americans elect their president. The current Electoral College system can result - as it did in 2000 - in a president who loses the popular vote but wins the majority of electoral votes.
The Electoral College system, established in the Constitution, has been a favorite target for change over the years: More than 700 amendments have been proposed, which is more than on any other subject. And, with the emergence of the Colorado ballot initiative as a flash point, a national debate may begin again.
"Activity in the states could trigger demand nationwide," said Robert Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, a Washington research organization that supports the direct election of the president. "If it passes in Colorado, the Republicans might decide to go after California" - traditionally a lock for Democratic presidential candidates - "and that could really get things moving."
Under the Constitution, state legislatures have the power to decide how their state's presidential electors are chosen. Most states, including Colorado, have a winner-take-all system. But Colorado supporters argue that a shift to proportional allocation would more fairly represent voters' wishes and would encourage more citizens to vote.
Opponents contend that a divided electoral vote would usually result in a 5-4 outcome here, making Colorado irrelevant in presidential elections.
Two states, Maine and Nebraska, permit their electoral votes to be divided. They award two electoral votes to the winning candidate statewide and the rest (two in Maine, three in Nebraska) to the winner in each congressional district. In practice, however, neither state has split its electoral vote since adopting that system (Maine in 1972, Nebraska in 1991).
In the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore won the nationwide popular election by 540,520 votes. Republican George W. Bush won the Electoral College vote, 271-266, to take the presidency. The Constitution requires that a candidate win a majority of the electoral votes to be elected (there are 538 electoral votes, so 270 are necessary to win); otherwise, the outcome is decided by the House of Representatives.
If Colorado had divided its electoral votes in 2000, when it had eight votes, it could have changed the outcome of the election. Colorado would have gone 5-3 for Bush instead of 8-0. That would have been enough to tip the Electoral College balance in Gore's favor, 269-268, one shy of victory.
One elector, a Democrat from the District of Columbia, did not vote, as a protest against the district's lack of representation in Congress. If the election outcome had hung in the balance and that disaffected elector had thus decided to vote for the candidate of his party, Gore would have won, 270-268.
The current ballot initiative in Colorado would take effect for this year's election, if approved by voters in November.
Katy Atkinson, a Republican political consultant who is helping to lead the opposition as spokeswoman for Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea, said that Colorado should not "unilaterally disarm" in the nation's political wars.
"If it were being done nationwide, it wouldn't be quite so offensive," Atkinson said. "But we'd be the only state doing things this way. It would leave Colorado with one net electoral vote, which is not the way you want to go. We'd be less influential even than Wyoming or Rhode Island."
Julie Brown, director of Make Your Vote Count, the group that gathered the signatures to put the proposal on the Colorado ballot this year, said dividing the electoral votes was a "basic issue of fairness." She dismisses the argument about reduced relevance, saying Colorado has relatively little clout in presidential elections now.
"The state rarely gets presidential visits... . They come here to fund-raise or if they need an advantageous photo op," Brown said. "I'm more interested in real clout - how much money do we get back for schools and roads? And right now, it's not much."
In a state that leans Republican, officials of that party have attacked the measure as a ploy to steal votes from Bush. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, and state GOP chairman Ted Halaby have criticized the initiative. State Sen. Ron Tupa, a Boulder Democrat who tried unsuccessfully to change Colorado's electoral system in 2001, backs it.
The Colorado initiative comes at a time when the issue seems to be reemerging as an election issue. The New York Times, in an editorial last month, called for the abolition of the Electoral College, denouncing the system as "a ridiculous setup, which thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning, and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis."
George C. Edwards 3d, a professor at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and the author of Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America, said that in the early days of the nation, states divided their electoral votes. As parties developed, the dominant party in each state realized it could collect more votes in a winner-take-all system, Edwards said.
"The basic motivation was greed on the part of the dominant party," he said.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans favor direct election of the president (most recently, 59 percent in a December 2000 Gallup poll), while surveys of political scientists have supported the Electoral College system. Some nonpartisan voter organizations, including the League of Women Voters, also endorse direct election.
The current system "violates the one-person, one-vote rule," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters. "It's essential to representative government to get it changed." But she said she was not optimistic about any change soon.
While states are free to change the way they select electors, any move to do away with the electoral system would require a constitutional amendment. That typically requires a two-thirds majority in each house of Congress and approval by three-fourths of the states.