Don't Look Back

(CBS)  In her latest Political Points commentary, CBS News Senior Political Editor Dotty Lynch takes a look at how changes in the Electoral College could affect the next race for the White House.

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It's an axiom that candidates, like generals, who fight the last war will inevitably lose the next one.

Such would be the case if the "Gore insiders" quoted in this week's U.S. News and World Report are correct. In an item predicting that Gore will run again in 2004, these cognoscenti say that he will follow the electoral strategy of 2000 with one exception – forget Tennessee and pour money into New Hampshire.

Sounds good, for if little New Hampshire's four electoral votes had gone to Gore, he would have beaten Bush 271-267 and Florida wouldn't have mattered.

But there's one big problem with this idea, as Harrison Hickman, Gore's pollster last time, points out.

The 2000 Census has reapportioned the electoral votes in each state, dropping Gore's 2000 base of 267 votes down to 260. If the states vote the same way in 2004 as they did in 2000, Bush would beat Gore by 278-260, and New Hampshire's four votes won't matter.

Eight states will gain a total of 12 electoral votes in 2004: Arizona (2), California (1), Colorado (1), Florida (2), Georgia (2), Nevada (1), North Carolina (1) and Texas (2). Of these, Gore won only California.

And ten states will lose those 12 electoral votes: Connecticut (1), Illinois (1), Indiana (1), Michigan (1), Mississippi (1), New York (2), Ohio (1), Oklahoma (1), Pennsylvania (2) and Wisconsin (1). Gore won six of those states and can now kiss eight of the 12 electoral votes goodbye.

Of course, all of this presumes that Bush really did win Florida and that he'd win it again in 2004. But Bush strategists are by no means taking Florida for granted and they know that 2004 will be different from 2000 in another important respect – Hispanic voters. Because this vote is growing so rapidly, the Bushies have targeted it and say they must exceed the 35 percent he won in 2000. Matthew Dowd, who coordinates polls for the Bush camp out of the Republican Nation Committee, says that if Bush doesn't improve his standing with minorities, he'll lose the election by 3 million votes, and risk losing Arizona and Colorado, as well as Florida.

None of these analyses ever question the existence of the Electoral College in 2004. It's a mystery why all these blue-ribbon panels now looking into electoral reform are avoiding the biggest dinosaur of them all – a system that is patently undemocratic and could cause more "illegitimacy" than all those hanging and pregnant chads.

In their excellent book, "Electoral College Primer 2000," Lawrence D. Longley and Neil R. Peirce point out the potentially "disastrous failings of the Electoral College in electing the people's President."

The winner-take-all system distorts the popular vote in a way thais unfair to voters in 44 of the 50 states. Why should Al Gore have won all the electoral votes in Iowa, Wisconsin, Oregon and New Mexico, or George W. Bush in Florida when they basically tied in the popular vote?

This time the electoral vote system worked for Bush but it could have easily tipped the other way for Gore. A week before the election it looked like Bush would win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College. What convoluted system caused Bush and Gore to virtually ignore the voters in four of the six most populous states – California, Texas, New York and Illinois – and spend so much time and money in Washington and Wisconsin?

Despite the lack of campaigning in the big states, the votes of citizens there do count more. While the extra two votes each state gets helps to marginally increase the clout of the small states, their votes still matter significantly less to the overall outcome. One statistical analysis shows that in 2000 the vote of each Californian counted 2.663 times more than the vote of each Montanan. The argument that the Electoral College helps the small states because candidates wouldn't go there otherwise is negated by statistics and by reality. Candidates campaign in big swing states and ignore safe, small ones.

For years the political system has disregarded the will of the American voters who believe that their president – like their governor, senator and mayor – should be the person who wins the most votes.

That simple idea is the one we peddle to emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Maybe it's time for the electoral reformers to go beyond new voting machines and take on something that would really make every vote count.


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