Barack Obama and John McCain practically camped in our backyards last fall, and it wasn’t because of Colorado’s vaunted hospitality. It was because this nation’s federalist system balances the interests of big and small states, forcing national candidates to search for votes in the unlikeliest places.
Naturally, the Electoral College — that handiwork of the 18th century — offends modern populists. It is a dinosaur thwarting the popular will, they say, saddling us with such millstones as, well, the last administration. And polls suggest most Americans agree that the Electoral College’s day has passed.
“Every vote by each and every American should count equally,” says Rep. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood, sponsor of a bill that would cast Colorado’s electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote no matter who prevailed here — so long as states with a majority of electoral votes pulled the same stunt.
But of course every American’s vote won’t count equally even if Kerr’s measure, which passed a House committee this week, becomes law. Kerr’s own vote, for example, will remain relatively more important than every Californian’s because Colorado has just as many senators as the Golden State despite one-seventh the population. Is the next step to eliminate this “inequity,” too?
If you shudder at the thought of another popular-vote loser in the White House, then by all means support Kerr’s bill. But if you’re made of sterner stuff, consider federalism’s upside.
Without the current system, states like Colorado would become flyover country for candidates, who’d spend virtually all of their time and money on the populous coasts, Great Lakes states and Texas. As it stands, a 51 percent victory in New York or California is as valuable as one by 75 percent. When that’s no longer true, smaller and mid-size states plopped in the middle of nowhere will be irrelevant, and so will any of their concerns that fail to mesh with the priorities of the largest urban centers and regional corridors.
If Colorado voters turn predictable again, this state will lose its status as a political magnet. But attention will simply shift to other small and medium states as candidates labor to build a national political base. That process is all but mandated by the self-contained elections that are now held in each state.
Colorado’s leaders should be the last-ditch defenders of such a system, not among the first to desert it.
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Colorado Ethics Watch was in its foot- stomping mode in a letter to the editor Friday, accusing me of judging its case against Republican congressman Mike Coffman without “knowing many, if any, of the facts or the procedure.”
No? Does reading Ethics Watch’s own complaint against the congressman and watching its lawyers present their case before the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission truly count for nothing? Maybe the group should find better representation.
Ethics Watch’s letter was most intriguing for what it didn’t say. It didn’t deny that the group failed “to call any of the witnesses who presumably should have been critical to its case” — including members of the technical panel whose advice Coffman supposedly ignored when, as secretary of state, he certified one company’s voting machines.
I called Ethics Watch to see what was up. Why didn’t its lawyers call the experts? Because, spokesperson Allison Johnson said, “The decision to certify was not an issue in the case.”
Take note, state commissioners: Ethics Watch has just backed off one of its most serious charges against Coffman. To wit: “By authorizing the certification of Premier’s voting system against the recommendations of the expert panel when a known conflict existed between Secretary Coffman and Premier’s lobbying firm, Secretary Coffman appears to have engaged in ‘corrupt conduct in the discharge’ of his duties under the Election Code.”
The next paragraph of the complaint urges the commission “to investigate and make findings regarding Secretary Coffman’s retention of Phase Line [a lobbying firm] and certification of the electronic voting machines . . . .”
So the decision to certify was an issue. Ethics Watch not only neglected to prove its case, it seems to have forgotten what its case actually was about.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
