Colorado's folly.

Byline: The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 10/22/04): An Oct. 21 editorial speculated that if Colorado's electoral vote had been divided proportionally in 2000, Al Gore would have been elected president with 269 Electoral College votes. Not so. A victory in the Electoral College requires 270 votes.

For more than a century, Americans who have run out of other things to argue about have debated whether to abolish the Electoral College. The issue gained urgency after Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency in 2000. Colorado has added a twist to this musty topic by preparing to vote on an initiative that would preserve the Electoral College while making its system for choosing the president worse.

Amendment 36 on Colorado's Nov. 2 ballot proposes a simple change: The state's electoral votes would be divided proportionally among presidential candidates, according to the number of popular votes they receive. A proportional distribution would replace the current winner-take-all system, which awarded all of the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush four years ago.

Republicans generally oppose Amendment 36, because Republican presidential candidates can usually count on taking all of Colorado's electoral marbles. If Amendment 36 had been in effect in 2000, Colorado would have given five electoral votes to Bush and three to Gore. Shifting three votes from Bush's column to Gore's would have given the vice president a 269-268 victory in the Electoral College.

But Democrats benefit from a winner-take-all system in other states such as Oregon, which gave all seven of its electoral votes to Gore in 2000. A Colorado-style system would have awarded four of Oregon's electors to Gore and three to Bush.

In any small state like Oregon or Colorado, the leading presidential candidates would always split the electoral vote nearly in half, with the popular vote winner receiving only one or two votes more than than the loser. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens points out that with only one or two electoral votes at stake, his state would be the least consequential political battleground in the nation.

If Colorado's concept spread to other states, everyone - members of either party or of none - would have cause to miss the winner-take-all system. Particularly in big states such as California, which has 55 electoral votes, minor party candidates would often attract enough support to pick up a few electoral votes. Indeed, by one calculation, if a Colorado-style system had been in effect nationwide four years ago, no candidate would have won a majority in the Electoral College because Ralph Nader would have been awarded seven electors. The minor-party problem would have been even more severe in 1992, when Ross Perot would have received an estimated 100 electoral votes.

Presidential elections that can't be decided in the Electoral College are settled in the House of Representatives - something that hasn't happened since 1825, when House members favored John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson. Each state's delegation gets one vote when the House chooses a president, giving Wyoming and North Dakota as much political weight as Texas and Florida. Rather than ensuring that presidential elections more accurately reflected the popular vote, a proportional division of electoral votes would often achieve the opposite result.

The Electoral College makes visible the enduring tension between small-R republican and small-D democratic values. Colorado's Amendment 36, rather than resolving that tension, would make it worse.