Colorado is a battleground state, but there is another reasonit's a focal point in the 2004 presidential election.
Voters in Colorado will decide Nov. 2 whether to pass anamendment to the state's constitution to split its nine electoralvotes rather than apply the current winner-take-all method. Forexample, if George W. Bush receives 53 percent of the popular voteand John Kerry receives 46 percent, Bush would take only five ofthe electoral votes instead of them all, and Kerry would take fourinstead of none.
The country has debated the use of the Electoral College sincethe 2000 presidential elections, but most states have not made adecision on whether to change the process.
If Colorado's Amendment 36 passes, it would take effect Nov. 3,before the state electors cast their ballots in December, and itcould spark a trend nationwide in which states would alter theirapplication of the Electoral College.
According to the U.S. Constitution, each state is to appoint anumber of electors equal to the sum of its members in theCongressional House of Representatives and Senate. The Constitutiondoes not specify how each state is to divide its electoralvotes.
Split voting would provide a closer reflection of the popularvote, Gary Crawley, a Ball State political science professor, said.He said if every state had split its electoral votes for the past100 years, though, the final Electoral College proportions wouldhave been similar.
"The electoral college vote comes out almost the same becauseyou're winning different states and dividing them up differently,"he said.
Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, do not base their electoralvotes upon the decision of the statewide population. Instead, thewinner of the popular vote within each Congressional district usedto elect delegates to the House of Representatives earns thatdistrict's electoral vote, and the remaining two electoral votesare awarded to the candidate winning the statewide popularvote.
Crawley said that Electoral College reform could affect campaignstrategies. Instead of focusing upon certain battleground states,presidential candidates would likely focus upon population centersinstead.
"They would have to campaign, I would argue, in more states," hesaid. "Indiana would not be a throwaway state, because if Kerrybelieved he could get instead of 40 percent of the vote, 45 percentof the vote, he might spend some time in here."
He cautioned that such a reform could lessen the effect ofstates with smaller populations.
Kevin Smith, a Ball State history professor, said part of thereason the Electoral College remains in place is its protection ofthose states.
"The smaller states would not make this reform, most likely,"Smith said, explaining that each state's guarantee of two electoralvotes to equal its number of Senators allows less populous statesgreater representation in the electoral college than if onlypopulation-based Congressional districts were used.
"From the very beginning of this republic, there was concernthat the smaller states' interests would be swallowed up by thelarger states."
Smith said the founding fathers' original intent in forming theElectoral College was also to protect the country from mobrule.
"The notion that everyone should have an equal voice was seen astoo extreme," Smith said.
He said the United States was founded as a republic so thebest-informed citizens would make decisions on behalf of themasses.
"We need to understand the founding of this nation not as themost radical alternative to monarchy."
As in the 2000 election in which Al Gore lost his run for thepresidency despite his win of the popular vote, Smith saidcontroversy concerning the Electoral College surrounded otherelections. Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in1888 failed to win a plurality of the national popular vote but wontheir elections through electoral votes.
Grover Cleveland, who lost to Harrison in 1888, gainedmajorities of 70 to 80 percent in the South, where blacks eithercould not vote or were pushed by influential people to vote forCleveland. Because the Electoral College did not allow as muchcontrol over the election's final result as a direct-populationvote would have, Harrison won the presidency.
"The electoral college there more accurately represented thewill of the people," Smith said.
Smith said he believed Colorado could set an example for thenation in Electoral College reform.
"Just because something is rooted in history doesn't mean youkeep it," he said. "I don't see us dumping the Electoral College,but what you may end up with is some further reform with it."
Removing the Electoral College, Crawley said, would require thedifficult process of amending the U.S. constitution.
"Most serious discussion about the electoral college is doingaway with it and going just to a direct vote," he said. "Thealternative is what Colorado is doing."
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