Here’s the premise: The Electoral College is an anti-democratic institution installed by the Founding Fathers back in the day when they took this whole Founding Father thing — white fathers, land-owning fathers, not-mothers-but-fathers — a lot more seriously than we do today.
But despite the fact that the Electoral College is bad for our country and should, at minimum, be on double-secret probation, there’s nothing much we can do about it. That’s because it can’t be changed without amending the Constitution, and since the Electoral College favors small states, you can’t get the required three-fourths to go along.
OK, I know many of you disagree with the premise. And we’ll get to the specifics of the argument in a minute. But, first, stay with me here, because you have to buy the premise to buy the bit.
So, given what we know (and possibly agree on), what to do? Here’s the shocker: What we do is go to the Colorado statehouse, where our very own legislature will solve this problem. No, seriously.
If you’ve been reading the papers, you know that Colorado is the latest state to take on the burden of moving the country toward a one-person, one-vote presidential election by (and here’s the difficult part to understand) agreeing to ignore the vote of its own residents.
What the state would do instead is agree to enter into a multistate compact — one that may (or may not) actually be legal — in which Colorado instructs its electors to give their votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.
Here’s what I mean. Let’s say Barack Obama wins in Colorado in 2012, but Sarah Palin wins the national popular vote. It could happen. Despite what the voters said, Colorado electors would be instructed to vote for Palin, even if she were giving her acceptance speech while standing in front of a row of slaughtered turkeys.
Under the bill, Colorado would join this compact only if states totaling 270 electoral votes (of 538) agreed. In other words, this would mean a takeover of the Electoral College, in which Coloradans would agree to respect the will of the nation’s voters, even if it meant contradicting the will of Colorado’s voters.
Does this make sense? I’m trying to imagine the above scenario. I’m trying to imagine Colorado Democrats sitting idly by after winning the statewide election and then watching the electoral votes go to Palin.
And yet, it has passed the Colorado House and is heading for a vote in the Senate. Four other states have passed it, and others are considering it. It’s a radical idea, but, to the surprise of almost everyone, it’s taking hold because it seems like something must be done.
It’s obvious our current election process can only be improved. Campaigns are too long, too expensive, often too insubstantial and open the possibility of accidentally watching way too much of Chris Matthews.
And then there’s the Electoral College, which was established by the Founders when they were not busy mandating that the U.S. Senate be elected by the state legislators and that slaves be counted as three-fifths of a person. What I mean is, the Founders weren’t perfect, even if the Constitution, after some critical amending, is close enough. The Constitution leaves it to states to determine how electors will vote.
The Electoral College is a relic, a constitutional compromise in a time when small states had to be convinced to join with larger states and when mob-rule democracy was considered as great a threat as tyranny.
But the argument today is not about one-person, one-vote (otherwise, you’d have to fix the U.S. Senate), but that, without the Electoral College, small states would be ignored in a presidential race.
The problem is, small states are ignored anyway. How many trips did John McCain and Barack Obama make to Montana? Wyoming? Either Dakota? You don’t have to do the math. There is no math.
The system doesn’t favor small states. It doesn’t favor large states, not when California, Texas and New York are accounted for in advance. It favors swing states, and not because of some compelling issue, but simply because the electorate in those states is fairly evenly split. Meaning Nevada now matters, but Illinois doesn’t. Pennsylvania matters, but New Jersey doesn’t. Colorado of 2008 matters but not Colorado of 2000.
And it’s worse than that. As Rick Hertzberg points out in the New Yorker, there were no campaign events in 11 of the 12 smallest states in 2008. And with focus groups, we’re not just talking swing-state domination, but swing counties, swing neighborhoods and, before long, swing households. What did we get in Colorado? We didn’t get Western issues heard. We got nonstop TV ads and traffic at Centennial Airport.
Something had to be done. I had been skeptical of this idea because it seems too clever, because it could never withstand an actual election controversy, because it’s an end run.
DU law professor Robert Hardaway, who opposes the bill, foresees a nightmare of nationwide recounts and lawsuits — the FrankenColeman Minnesota of 2008 times 10. Big-time Denver lawyer Ted Trimpa, who’s lobbying for the National Popular Vote plan, sees it this way. “This is forcing the conversation,” he said. “If you’re going to change the system, you have to force the conversation.”
In other words, this bill may not be perfect (it’s not). It may not be a solution at all. But if enough states were to pass this bill into law, it might force people to actually consider amending the Constitution. The reason you attempt an end run, after all, is to try to move the ball.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com
