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California May Subvert Electoral College
The California legislature has passed a bill to drastically change the way the president is elected – giving the state’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote, regardless of the results within the state.
The bill is now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk, and he has until Sept. 30 to decide whether to sign it.
"It would be a major development if California enacts this thing,” Tim Storey, an analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures, told the New York Times.
The mechanism for changing the way Americans vote for the president without a constitutional amendment was devised by computer scientist John R. Koza, co-inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket.
His brainstorm was to abandon efforts to amend the constitution and abolish the Electoral College, and instead focus on creating "interstate compacts” – contracts that bind states over issues like nuclear waste and port authorities.
Story Continues Below In his capacity as chief executive of Scientific Games in Atlanta, Koza had learned how interstate compacts work.
"Multistate lotteries like Powerball are based on such compacts,” the Times reports. "What, he wondered, if a similar agreement bound states together to thwart the Electoral College.”
Koza’s compact, if approved by enough state legislatures, would commit state electors to vote for the candidate winning the most votes nationwide, thereby making an end run around the Electoral College.
"The bottom line is that the system has outlived its usefulness,” said Assemblyman Thomas J. Umberg, a Democrat who sponsored the California bill. "It’s past time that Americans should elect their president by direct vote of the people.”
Umberg said Schwarzenegger is giving the bill serious consideration.
A significant result of Koza’s plan would be a change in the way presidential campaigns are conducted. "Now, the candidates spend almost all of their time in a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida and ignore the rest of the country,” he told the Times. "This would force candidates to campaign nationally for every vote.”
The idea is not without its critics. Robert Hardaway, a professor of law at the University of Denver, said: "It’s legal, but it would be a terrible idea. "Look at the trauma the country went through having a recount in Florida. Suppose what would happen, in the face of a close national election, if we had to have a recount in every little hamlet.”
And Jerry F. Hough, a professor of political science at Duke, said conservatives could oppose the effort as a liberal move to regain lost power, in light of Al Gore winning the popular vote in 2000: "I would say this is clearly in the face of Al Gore’s loss in 2000.”
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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