Feinstein and Chafee want to abolish Electoral College

The Providence Journal ^ | 1/6/05 | Scott McKay

[EA_Man]

Electoral College must go say Chafee and Feinstein

The senators support legislation and a subsequent constitutional amendment eliminating the 18th-century method of electing presidents.

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 6, 2005 BY SCOTT MacKAY Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- In a bipartisan alliance to abolish the Electoral College, Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said yesterday he will join California Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein's proposal to get rid of the electoral system used to choose U.S. presidents and replace it with a one-person, one-vote popular plebisicite.

Feinstein said recently she will introduce legislation to eliminate the Electoral College, which has its roots in the 18th century, and use the popular vote to determine the White House victor.

Chafee said in an interview yesterday that the Electoral College makes too many voters irrelevant in the modern presidential election process. Rhode Island, seen as a staunchly Democratic state in presidential politics, has received virtually no attention from major party presidential candidates in recent election cycles, Chafee said.

"Under the current system, the only states that get any candidate visits are the battleground states," said Chafee. "As a Rhode Islander . . . I'd like to see the presidential candidates make an investment in Rhode Island. The last election came down to just Ohio and Florida."

What is more, Chafee said, is that a tie in the Electoral College in a presidential election would push the decision into the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. That, Chafee said, would not be a representative system.

Chafee acknowledged that the legislation abolishing the Electoral College is not likely to receive serious attention from the Republican Senate leadership. "Its chances of seeing the light of day are slim . . . but it is the right thing to do."

The legislation will probably be introduced Jan. 24, the first day senators can submit legislation, said Howard Gantman, Feinstein's spokesman.

And despite popular support, the proposal would face a difficult path because it would require a constitutional amendment. It takes a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress and ratification by 38 states for an amendment to become law.

It is an irony of the 21st century that presidential elections in an era of the Internet and internationl jet travel are decided by the Electoral College, a system established by men -- no women were allowed to vote -- who communicated by quill pen and horseback mail and traveled by clipper ship.

The system was erected by the men who founded the United States in 1789 because they did not trust average citizens. Voting was restricted to white males who owned property. And they only allowed those voters to select one segment of the U.S. government -- the federal House of Representatives.

U.S. senators were chosen by legislatures until 1913, when popular election of senators was established. The founders established the Electoral College -- which in those days was made up of community and political leaders -- to pick the president.

The Electoral College has evolved into a system that favors small states -- those with fewer than 10 electoral votes -- and focuses presidential campaigns almost entirely on closely contested states.

Each state's electoral vote is determined by adding the number of representatives, which is determined by population, and senators. Each state gets two senators, so California, with more than 30 million residents, and Rhode Island, with about 1 million, each start with two electoral votes. The rest of each state's electoral votes are determined by the number of people living in a state, as measured every 10 years by the Census Bureau. In almost every state, electoral votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, meaning that a candidate who wins Rhode Island by 100,000 votes or 1 vote gets all of the state's 4 electoral votes.

The winner-take-all aspect means that major party presidential candidates do not really compete for every vote. Rather, they concentrate their campaigning and spending on the narrow number of states that public opinon polls show as competitive.

Thus, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, viewed as Democratic strongholds in most presidential elections, receive scant attention from major candidates. Rhode Island and Massachusetts have supported the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1988. Some of the urgency in changing the system has been drained away since the 2004 reelection of President Bush over Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, an election where the Electoral College results mirrored the popular vote. But in 2000, Bush, who was then the Texas governor, won the Electoral College by a 271-266 margin over former Vice President Al Gore. That disputed election went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Mr. Bush's win despite Gore's victory by more than 500,000 in the popular vote.

There have been four disputed presidential elections in which the man elected president lost the popular vote -- John Q. Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison 1888 and Mr. Bush in 2000.

"The Electoral College is an anchronism and the time has come to bring our democracy into the 21st century," said Feinstein, in a statement. "During the founding years of the Republic, the Electoral College may have been a suitable system, but today it is flawed and amounts to national elections being decided in several battleground states."

[Gunrunner2]

And a b-day party for 100 2-yr olds. . .just like a dems convention.

[philman_36]

Nice link. Thanks.

[philman_36]

Thank you very much.