Colorado initiative could alter way electoral votes are divided

[Judi Lynn]

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.19.2004

Colorado initiative could alter way electoral votes are divided

THE NEW YORK TIMES

DENVER - Colorado voters have delivered the state for the Republican presidential candidate in every election in the last half century, except when Bill Clinton won by a whisker in 1992 and Lyndon B. Johnson swamped Barry Goldwater in 1964.

But if a ballot initiative called Amendment 36 is approved by the voters here on Election Day, the facade of unanimity will shatter, and in one stroke a new small state's worth of definitively Democratic Electoral College votes will be created in the heart of what has been the solidly Republican West.

Amendment 36 would make Colorado the first state to distribute its electoral votes on the basis of its popular vote. The change would take effect immediately with this year's election, which means that President Bush and Sen. John Kerry would share Colorado's nine electoral votes, but neither would get all.

Political experts say the implications for the election are deeply uncertain. A Rocky Mountain News/News 4 poll released Friday showed Bush and Kerry in a statistical dead heat here.

Bush received just under 51 percent here in 2000, which, under the proposal, would be good for five of the nine votes.
(snip/...)

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/news/39605.php

[truthisfreedom]

1. hahaha. this will drive them nuts! what if it happened everywhere?

their entire strategery for world domination would erode in a matter of years.

[shockingelk]

2. I'm up for it

State's rights and stuff ...

Good time to point out a frequently overlooked fact:

Currently ME and NE divvy up EVs as follows:

2 to whoever gets the statewide popular vote
the rest go according to the popular vote in each congressional district.

[Lucky Luciano]

3. I've discussed tghis before with people

Mathematically, this turns out to be not so good an idea - especially for the DEMs. I will just illustrate with an example. Take WI which has 10 EVs. Most likely, if WI were to adopt a similar measure, then most elections would divide WI's electoral votes 5-5. Wyoming and Alaska and other small states would ALWAYS be 2-1 which would mean that these small states would get huge representation since WI, MA, MN and others would usually be splitting their votes evenly (they each have an even number of EVs). Just having an odd number of EVs would give a state an advantgae because it is guaranteed not to be split evenly, so one candidate would get a majority of the votes!!! I will leave it to the reader to take this and extrapolate all the other mathematical problems that could occur. Incidentally, since these small states are usually very pro bush, bush would actually benefit!!! The states with a lot of EVs will be a little more fair because there is less round off error with a lot of EVs, so Kerry would not stand to gain much. SO, the small states would actually determine the elections like never before! Think carefully about this. Now, if only CO does this, then it is bad for CO because it will almost always have the EVs be split 5-4, so it would effectively only have one electoral vote, which is not worht fighting for and the state would be ignored.

The methods of NB and ME are much better, where the two votes representing the senators of the state go to the state's popular vote winner and the rest of the EVs are decided by the congressional districts.

Of course, much better than that would be that the electoral college is eliminated and the popular vote rules. That would require an amendment to the consititution - 38 states would have to ratify this and that sure as fuck is not going to happen because no small or medium state will vote to take away its overrepresentation!!!!!

[moez]

4. If all of the states went this route

Doesn't it increase the likelihood of elections going to the House for the tie-breaker? I mean, it will be much easier to get a tie when breaking the EV's of each state up evenly.

And, I believe, that when it goes to the house, that each state gets one vote (as opposed to one vote for each rep).... Currently, we'd lose in that scenario.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. A tie would still be unlikely.

I did a cursory scan along with some quick estimates to conclude that if every state did this, then b*sh would have won the 2000 election by 37 EVs for example.

[Mika]

5. Got democracy?

Nope. :(

[moez]

6. Whew!

It's a good thing because.... confidentially - we're not a democracy...

[antigone382]

8. Yes we are

We aren't a direct democracy, in which the people themselves vote on legislation, but we are a representative democracy, in which the people elect representatives who vote on legislation.

America is, by definition, a representative democracy, which is pretty much synonmymous with "federalist republic," "democratic republic," etc.