Electoral college lawsuit in Colorado

[Faithless]

Very interesting. It the lawsuit goes through, it will affect this election for Colorado.

A victory could trigger similar lawsuits in other states.

Is this enough to make the popular vote significant?

Lawsuit challenges proposal to split Colo. electoral votes

Associated Press
Oct. 14, 2004 12:00 AM

DENVER - A lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges a ballot measure that would scrap Colorado's winner-take-all system for Electoral College votes and award them based on how well the candidate did in the statewide popular vote.

The lawsuit filed by Jason Napolitano asks a federal judge to declare the closely watched proposal unconstitutional before the Nov. 2 vote. Napolitano, who describes himself simply as a registered voter, said it is up to state lawmakers to determine how electoral votes are distributed.

Amendment 36 has drawn national attention in part because the race between President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry is expected to be close. The plan would apply to this year's election, meaning that Bush or Kerry could win the statewide vote but receive only five of Colorado's nine electoral votes.

Supporters say the proposal would make sure every vote is represented.

Critics say it would make Colorado politically irrelevant because only one electoral vote would be up for grabs in most elections.

Napolitano said the repercussions have not been fully discussed and that applying the plan retroactively violates federal law.

[lethal]

Nebraska and Maine also went to the same system that Colorado is voting for. However, they aren't expected to actually split their vote, so it will likely have little effect.

Colorado is exptected to go barely Bush, so the vote would be 5-4. If the national vote is as close as predicted, Colorado splitting the vote could mean the difference between one candidate winning and losing. Then it'll be up to the Supremes to decide that Bush is President once again.

[Mr.Lum]

They should just get rid of this damn thing. It gives unfiar weight to various states. What makes Colorado or California any better than Connecticut or Rhode Island? Not a damn thing, shit I will be the first one to say we're better in terms of history and importance. But that doesn't mean we shouldhave more electoral votes. This system is a waste of time. Let the people fucking speak.

[Shuriken]

I am against Bush, and yet, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College. The Electoral College allows smaller states to have some say in the election. Without it, all the presidential candidate would need to do is sew up the states of California and New York to be on his way to a popular-vote victory. Abolishing the Electoral College also presumes the permanence of the two-party system, which I do not think should be a foregone conclusion.

I don't really mind the manner in which Bush won as much as I mind what he did with his victory. Gore's popular-vote win and Bush's Electoral College squeaker (based on the voting irregularities in a state governed by his brother) were obviously not a mandate. Bush should have been conscious that he was the voters' second choice and governed accordingly.

Instead, Bush governed as if he'd won in a landslide, feeling no more obligation to the majority who voted against him than appointing a Democrat, Norm Mineta of California, as Secretary of Transportation, an office where his more liberal views would have the least effect. (Mineta came to unexpected prominence on 9/11, when he was in power to ground all airplanes and to order against the racial profiling of air passengers — Mineta, a Japanese American, himself having been the victim of racial profiling when he was interned in a camp as a young boy.)

If the Electoral College is to be reformed, I think that it should be done in a national, comprehensive manner, not on a state-by-state basis.

[Faithless]

A weird aside on the electoral college:

http://www.rockdalecitizen.net/sc/archive/2004/5862.htm

...
For example, if just New Hampshire and Nevada (or West Virginia) shifted from favoring Bush to the Democrats this time, there could be a 269-269 tie, leaving it to the House to pick the next president and the Senate to pick the new vice president come January.

That would leave open the jarring possibility of a Bush-Edwards or Kerry-Cheney pairing, depending on the political leanings of the new House and Senate.
...

.
And even if the Colorado lawsuit goes in favor of proportioning the electoral votes:

Michael White, the federal official responsible for coordinating certain aspects of the Electoral College, says he’ll be keeping an especially close eye on Colorado, where voters are considering a referendum to divide the state’s electoral votes proportionally among the candidates rather than using the existing winner-takes-all formula. A lawsuit is virtually guaranteed if the referendum is approved, meaning the state’s nine electoral votes could be a lingering question long after Election Day.