Electoral Antique

Late Nov. 2, the electoral vote tallies mount on TVs across the land. It’s very close. Who’s to become the 44th president? Suddenly, this just in: Colorado voters approve Amendment 36! Yawn. But wait! This referendum divvies that state’s nine electoral votes proportionately, not winner-take-all.

And it would take effect that night.

If Amendment 36 passes and the election comes down to those last few electoral votes, the nation could again be president-shopping until Christmas. But remove the immediate pain from the idea itself, and the rightness is clear. This is a nation still moving toward a union more of people than of states. Colorado gives new breath to an idea that is irrefutably democratic.

A great attraction of American democracy, funny hats aside, is its dynamism, the ability to, as dynamic English usage puts it, morph. The electoral college, the arcane institution that turns the national presidential selection process into winner-take-all state elections, is ripe for morphing.

“Electoral college” is one of those history lessons that doesn’t stick anymore. Its roots in indirect presidential elections mean nothing in a full voting democracy. Every four years, we hear the numbers: 539 total, 270 needed to win. Maps are colored in red and blue. But that’s not all. The practical result of winner-take-all has been to cut from the campaign process any state not in play. No point for Kerry to invest precious time learning Republican issues in Montana or enlarging a double-digit lead in California. Same for Bush in solidly Democratic New York or GOP Virginia. All ballots for each state’s loser are, in effect, discarded.

Getting rid of the electoral college would require amending the Constitution. But electoral-vote allocating is left to states, so there’s no cumbersome amendment process to slow that more modest reform by legislatures or voter petitions. Although anyone hoping for a smooth election wishes Colorado’s measure would not be effective immediately if it passes, Maine and Nebraska already do it, and the nation still stands.

Political scientists have written books on the million possible permutations. If California alone went proportional, how could a Democratic president be elected? Some things would be more certain. With the United States navigating an era of tight political divisions, proportional electoral voting virtually precludes one candidate winning the popular vote while losing the electoral tally, as happened in 2000.

Reforming the electoral college is like preventing forest fires, seeming urgent only when the flames (or elections) are near. Incentive for electoral change also has to come from challengers of entrenched power. That usually augurs ill for reform.

Colorado’s Republican governor opposes Amendment 36, petitioned onto the ballot by an anti-electoral college foundation. Why share nine likely Republican electoral votes, especially this year? California’s strongly Democratic Legislature would balk even harder. Unless, by some fluke, statesmanship broke out and greater good outweighed self-interest briefly.

Hope does reside in history’s deliciously unpredictable ironies. To retain its power, the Federalist Party pushed the winner-take-all electoral college in the late 1700s. Federalists got their way. But they never won nationally after 1796. A proportionate lesson there.