Rosen: Target: Electoral College

Published April 28, 2006 at midnight

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In 2004, Colorado voters, by a 2-to-1 ratio, soundly defeated Amendment 36, a measure that would have broken with tradition to split our state's nine electoral votes on a proportional basis. This was a scheme concocted by Democrats hoping to salvage a few electoral votes in a state where George W. Bush was expected to win them all. Well, it's 2006, and they're b-a-a-c-k.

This time it's a frontal assault on the Electoral College in the form of Senate Bill 223, which recently passed by a vote of 20-15, with all 18 Democrats and 2 misguided Republicans out of 17 supporting it. The bill would pledge Colorado to cast all its Electoral College votes to whichever presidential candidate gets the most popular votes nationally, regardless of who gets the most votes in our state.

Colorado would be part of an interstate compact that would take effect when enough other states joined to constitute an Electoral College majority. In other words, Coloradans would sacrifice their own choice for president to the goal of circumventing the Electoral College. By this scheme, the Electoral College would be effectively neutralized and the president would be elected strictly on the basis of the national popular vote.

For example, let's say 70 percent of Coloradans in 2008 vote for John McCain, 5 percent for Ralph Nader, and 25 percent for Hillary Clinton. Hillary carries only 15 states, losing 35. But she racks up enough votes in New York, California and Illinois to give her a plurality of the total national popular vote. Consequently, the will of Coloradans is defied and our Electoral College votes are given to Hillary. The same thing happens to other states that joined this compact and Hillary becomes president.

This goofy idea is the brainchild of John Koza, a professor of computer science at Stanford. Koza made millions developing the technology states use for scratch-and- win lotteries and he's been generously dispensing enough of it to Democratic candidates across the country to make the "Mother Jones 400," the radical left-wing magazine's listing of top political contributors. The movement has a sprinkling of just enough so-called Republicans - like John Anderson, who lost badly as a third-party opponent of Ronald Reagan in 1980 - to pretend bipartisan support. Its goal is to abolish the Electoral College in the name of democracy.

But we are not a democracy, never have been and most definitely never should be. The Founders - who abhorred the excesses and tyranny of pure democracies - designed our system as a constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority, along with representative government, federalism, the separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review and the presidential veto to name a few "anti-democratic" safeguards.

We're not a collective, amorphous blob, but a confederation of individual states, each retaining some sovereign powers, unique qualities, values and agendas.

The Electoral College is a constant reminder of that, intended to apportion votes in such a way as to protect the interests of less-populous states. We do not now have nor have we ever had a national popular vote for president. We have 51 separate elections in each of the states and the District of Columbia to determine how those Electoral College votes will be cast. It's only for purposes of curiosity, devoid of legal standing, that we tally those 51 election results to produce a national total.

If the nation elected presidents strictly through a direct popular vote, why would a serious candidate waste time and resources in Colorado to pick up a few thousand-vote differential when 25 million votes are at stake in New York and California? Without the Electoral College, presidential politics would move sharply to the left as candidates pandered to the political appetites of large liberal voting blocs in the Northeast and California. Perhaps that's why its elimination has been a recurring liberal cause.

To do it straightforwardly through a constitutional amendment would require ratification by three-quarters of the states. Knowing there are enough small states to block that, they've come up with this latest cynical ploy.

Supporters of SB 223 in Colorado preposterously argue the current system encourages candidates to "ignore" safe states by campaigning in swing states. So what? I don't care if they never come here to campaign. I just don't want to be ignored after they're elected. A majority of Coloradans hasn't been "ignored" by George W. Bush. We voted for him because we preferred his policies to John Kerry's. We'd be ignored if a majority of us voted for one candidate but had our votes given to another.

Mike Rosen's radio show airs daily from 9 a.m. to noon on 850 KOA. He can be reached by e-mail at mikerosen@850koa.com.

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