Millions of U.S. Votes Won't Count

[bigpoppanils]

Millions of U.S. Votes Won't Count: Ann Woolner (Correct)

(Commentary. Restores dropped zero in 124,000 in 15th paragraph. Ann Woolner is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

By Ann Woolner

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- If you're a Bostonian and plan to vote for President George W. Bush in November, don't expect your vote to count.

Don't feel bad. Not a single Texas vote for Senator John Kerry will matter, either.

We can thank the Electoral College and state legislatures for making voting, that key to democracy, meaningless for millions of Americans.

This isn't another diatribe about Bush being an un-elected president. It is a diatribe about the Electoral College stripping Republicans, Democrats and independents of their votes.

Consider this: More than 47 million people cast irrelevant votes for president in 2000 because their favorite candidate piled up fewer votes in their state than another guy did.

That's right. Out of 104 million votes cast for Bush, Al Gore and Ralph Nader, 47 million people punched cards, touched screens or pulled levers to cast votes that simply didn't matter. That's because in all but two states, the candidate who gets the biggest chunk of the popular vote wins all of the electoral votes.

``It violates political equality,'' says George C. Edwards III, a political science professor at Texas A&M University and co- author of ``Why the Electoral College is Bad for America.''

The winner-take-all rule, used in all states except Maine and Nebraska, means any vote cast for a presidential favorite who doesn't carry the state does not count.

One Person, One Vote

Electoral votes are the only votes that count, as we saw when Gore won the national popular vote by 544,000 ballots in 2000 but lost the White House.

This year, massive numbers of New Yorkers will vote for Bush, who is as likely to prevail there as he is to declare his invasion of Iraq wrong. The Empire State gave him only 35 percent of its vote last time around.

Still, that was 2.4 million New York votes for Bush in 2000 -- none represented in the Electoral College. The college did reflect the 172,000 Washingtonians who voted for Gore.

Whatever happened to one person, one vote?

Forget about Florida's hanging chads or the U.S. Supreme Court decision to halt vote-counting in that state in December 2000. Consider the 4.6 million Californians whose votes for Bush were rendered impotent.

U.S. Constitution

The use of electoral votes in presidential elections is required by the U.S. Constitution, but even those votes don't carry equal weight. Each state gets as many electors as it has members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Because every state has two senators no matter what its population, residents of small states get more electoral wallop than those in large states. Combine that with differences in voter turnout and margins of victory, apply some math and you see that each North Dakota elector in 2000 represented only 58,000 votes for Bush, while each New York elector represented 124,000 votes for Gore.

In other words, it took twice as many New Yorkers as North Dakotans to make one electoral vote.

In this year's campaign, all attention focuses on the so- called battleground states, of which there are 17 by most accounts. Those are the states that seem to be up for grabs.

The battleground is where the campaigning occurs, where most campaign ads air, where what voters want matters.

By contrast, in states like Georgia, ``It does make it lonely sometimes,'' says Bobby Kahn, executive director of the state Democratic Party.

Nebraska and Maine

Because it's presumed Bush territory, Georgia hadn't seen a national candidate for weeks when Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards showed up Monday for two Democratic National Committee fundraisers in Atlanta, preceded by a public rally thrown together as an afterthought.

Organizers may as well have thrown steak to a pride of starving lions. Thousands of cheering, flag waving, sign pumping, room-shaking fans jammed a conference center site to hear Edwards speak.

Too bad their enthusiasm won't matter in November.

There was a time when the winner didn't take all. Professor Edwards says state legislatures adopted those rules in the 19th century after political parties developed and took control of state houses.

In the late 20th century, lawmakers in Nebraska and Maine, each with four electoral votes, changed it so that two electors represent the winner in each of two congressional districts, while the candidate who takes the state gets two bonus electors.

So far, Professor Edwards says, there hasn't been a split delegation from either state.

Since 2000, at least a dozen state legislatures have rejected bills to end winner-take-all.

Petition Drive

And so, Colorado citizens launched a petition drive to change the system. Last week officials approved the initiative for the November ballot.

If it succeeds, Colorado's nine electoral votes will be cast in direct proportion to the popular vote for president, with no candidate given a bonus elector.

``We think this is a much fairer approach,'' says Julie Brown, who directs the initiative campaign.

Fairer it is. It would be more fair if every state and the District of Columbia had the same proportional rule.

Fairest of all would be to abolish the Electoral College and have direct election for president and vice president.

``Why do we have an election if the person who comes in second wins, where some people count more than other people?'' asks Professor Edwards.

Those who think the Electoral College is good for America say it forces candidates to campaign in states and in rural areas where they wouldn't otherwise go, and that it gives minority interests bargaining power.

Vote Anyway

If that were true, why are two-thirds of the states -- big ones, little ones, rural ones and urban ones -- ignored by presidential candidates?

Likewise, minority interests matter to candidates only if the minorities live in sufficient numbers in battleground states.

Then there is the philosophic argument: the U.S. is, after all, a republic, not a democracy. And yet, no one claims it an affront to the republic that voters directly elect governors and mayors and members of Congress.

If you live where there's little sign of a presidential campaign, go to the polls in November anyway. There are congressional races and local contests that matter a lot.

And while you're there, go ahead and declare your pick for the most powerful job on earth. But if you're voting against your home state's grain, don't expect your vote to matter.

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[jamiroguy1]

IMO, the ellectoral college should be abolished.

[siceone]

IMO, the ellectoral college should be abolished.

Imo I think the electoral college is the only think saving this country from mob rule