Is 36 Your Lucky Number?

Is Amendment 36 a Colorado Cassandra at the gates or a godsend for democracy?

The "winner-takes-all" principle uniquely expresses many aspects of US society. We see it in the economy, in health-care issues, in education and in the democratic process as a whole. This latter process has recently come under fire by legislators in Colorado.

Amendment 36 is a proposal to change the way the Electoral College divides its votes in that state. Two other states have similar laws, Nebraska and Maine. In these states, candiates who win the popular vote receive two electoral votes, while one vote goes to each congressional district in which a candidate receives a majority. However, neither has ever done what Colorado proposes doing – i.e. split the electoral votes.

This issue raises core democratic principles. Should voters demand that their votes count – in a one-man, one-vote system – or should they be content to allow others to choose the person who will represent them as president? Democratic legislators in Colorado are currently fighting for the former principle.

If passed by Colorado voters on November 2, the state's nine electoral votes will be allocated to each presidential candidate in the 2004 election, proportionately, based on the popular vote. Here is the text of Amendment 36.

In an article entitled Scrap Electoral College, Says New York Times. The New York Times makes a strong case in favor of Electoral-College reform.

The electoral college "thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis," the paper said in an editorial.

"The main problem with the electoral college is that it builds into every election the possibility, which has been a reality three times since the Civil War, that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote," the editorial said.
"The majority does not rule, and every vote is not equal -- those are reasons enough to scrap the system," the Times said.

Bruce Bartlett, writing in the conservative National Review, presented an opposing view.

Although there are legitimate criticisms to make of the Electoral College, the Colorado effort is nothing but a transparently partisan effort to give Kerry a couple of extra electoral votes. If the election this year is as close as the polls suggest it will be, it could mean the margin of victory.

Here is a more objective analysis of Amendment 36 and its significance for America.

One set of proposals looks toward keeping the electoral college but eliminating its winner-take-all features. This shift could be brought about by choosing most electors on a congressional district basis, with only two electors per state chosen statewide. A 1969 Maine law provides for this method, and similar legislation has been considered in several other states. Alternatively, the office of elector could be eliminated and the electoral votes of a state simply assigned to candidates on the basis of the popular vote each receives. Constitutional amendments to that effect have been introduced in Congress but none has passed. These changes might eliminate some distortion of the popular vote, but they would not answer the complaint that the people do not elect the president directly.

Hamilton made the original argument in favor of the Electoral College in Federalist Paper #68. He even raised the spector of a "Manchurian Candidate":

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?

One factor that weighs (perhaps) subjectively for proponents of one-man, one vote, is the idea that the principle of a winner-takes-all voting system, embedded in the principle of a winner-takes-all society, is exactly what is wrong with contemporary democracy and the rule of law. One may wonder why millions of potential voters shy away from the political system, why millions of potential voters shun politics as a legitimate concern and why millions of potential voters have adopted the cynical attitude that voting for one's representatives is a sham and that only the rich and powerful have real voices in the body politic.

Perhaps Amenment 36 will pass when voters in Colorado go to the polls on November 2, perhaps not. One way or the other, the citizens of that great state have cast the die for future consideration of the Republic. Those who favor the amendment will cheer if it passes; those who are against it will decry its passage – and vice versa.

One could argue that only democracy stands to win with this vote, no matter what the outcome. The sleeping giant of popular democracy has awakened from its long hibernation. The future could belong to the people, not the monied interests. The principle of a winner-takes-all election may soon shift to focus on the princple of a winner-takes-all society -- and America can only benefit from such scrutiney.

In that sense, for people of good will everywhere, 36 may indeed be their lucky number.