What Goes Around...

Colorado certainly has been a crazy state to watch this past year - given Kerry's surprising strength there. Clinton won it in 1992, but only due to Perot's help in splitting the Bush I votes. Carter even lost Colorado on the road to victory in 1976, and Clinton lost the state to Dole in his re-election bid in 1996 as well. So it is unsurprising, especially given Florida, that Democratic legislators are mobilizing to pass the initiative. For thorough coverage check out the Center for Education in Law and Democracy's compilation of information and articles. I do not have enough background in American constitutional law to offer especially shrewd analysis. This certainly helps hint at the difficulties involved in truly reforming the Electoral College system, though. Let me go on the record now and say that whatever the outcome of the amendment, I favour applying the status quo to the results in 2004, and would vote against it if I had the option. I think the two legal challenges to its retroactive imposition would make reducing the winner's tally from 9 to 5 especially difficult to swallow, regardless whether they go to Bush or Kerry. I also think that in the absence of reform from other states, this truly would make Colorado irrelevant in future elections. While a legitimate case can be made for the Maine and Nebraska models that focus on awarding EVs for winning congressional districts, splitting them according to state-wide popular vote strikes me as lunacy. Really, who will ever come to Colorado to campaign for 1 electoral vote? I do sincerely hope that the passage of this amendment coupled with a close Electoral College loss do not end up serving as Kerry's Gore-like consolation prize, so Democrats go around claiming fruitlessly that they "won" this election as well. Again, if he can't beat Bush on the merits... (NOTE this is my intellectual position, of course. If it ever did come to this, I reserve the right to root for any outcome post-Nov 2nd that kicks Bush out of the White House.) The Kerry scenario you describe certainly is the more interesting - and potentially more catastrophic for the U.S., yet I still imagine that the status quo would prevail. Oh, the hypocrisy on both sides would be truly galling, though, and it is fortunate for Kerry that so far he does not seem to have any connection whatsoever with the initiative. Perhaps I have too much faith in the Conservatives on the SCC, but I think the fact that Democrats rallied behind the President after the decision last time around would help. Popular opinion would be horribly divided, but I think it would lean toward Kerry and a victory based on the rules in place at the time of the vote. Bush cannot be expected to coast into office on the coat-tails of the Supremes AGAIN, on reasoning that contrasts the majority's decision in Gore v. Bush, could he? It might stand as the ultimate vindication of the old maxim: "What goes around comes around". Let's just hope it doesn't come to this. I still think that the Dieboldt machines and the controversies that Krugman and Herbert have been reporting out of Florida could be the true election/constitutional time bombs. Makes it less easy to laugh at the "free and fair" elections in Afghanistan where the voting boxes look like they were bought at the dollarstore, they are being carried across country by donkey, and people voted multiple times simply by washing their hands...