In Focus

Electing a president this time around hasn't been pretty. Disputed ballots, alleged irregularities, and ever-changing tallies were complicated by media blunders and an exceptionally close vote. But the real debate lies ahead.

Unhappy Gore partisans now turn their ire to a ready-made target: the Electoral College. They cry "foul" because while Gore amassed more popular votes nationwide, he lost the vote that counted, the electoral vote. Pundits such as CNN's Bill Press rail, "It's time to get rid of the Electoral College. It is an insult to democracy."

But is it? I believe we should defend a process that has successfully elected 42 consecutive presidents without a single shot fired.

The most misunderstood and novel aspect of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College, was adopted to allay fears about the vagaries of direct elections and to sidestep Congressional or state legislative selection of the president. It was not an elitist attempt to keep the election out of the hands of people but a compromise between large states wanting influence proportionate to their population and small states demanding influence proportionate to their equal standing.

The compromise guaranteed that each state, no matter how small, has electoral votes equal to its number of senators and representatives and that each state freely determines how to select those electors. To maximize influence, state legislatures have adopted a winner-take-all method, meaning all electoral votes go to the candidate receiving a majority of the popular vote. This winner-take-all method raises the prospect of a discrepancy between the popular and electoral votes.

The election of 1888 proved that a loser in the national popular vote could win a majority of the electoral votes. This is possible for the simple reason that there is not a perfect mathematical proportion between the size of the electoral vote and the size of the popular vote. The proportion is distorted because states embrace the winner-take-all principle and smaller states receive more electoral votes than their population merits.

Critics claim it is undemocratic for the national vote winner to sit on the sidelines. Why not a nationwide popular election?

Remember all modes of election are imperfect. Often neither major candidate obtains majority support. Clinton, Nixon, Kennedy, and Lincoln were all elected with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. Whenever that happens, a nationwide popular election would entail a run-off election. Do we really want a three-week extension of the campaign, costing more money, capped by yet another trip to the polls?

At the very least the Electoral College ensures every president has a mandate from a majority of electors. The Electoral College, as it operates today, is democratic. We have 50 separate popular elections. Gore and Bush were aware of the rules and strategized to win enough of those 50 elections to capture the Electoral College. Both knew of the potential of a popular-electoral vote discrepancy.

If the recount does indeed confirm Bush's slim margin in Florida, he will have won 30 popular elections resulting in 271 electoral votes, 1 more than needed. Gore's 267 electoral votes made the race the thinnest margin since Rutherford Hayes' controversial victory over Samuel Tilden in 1876.

Every close presidential race elicits a slew of proposals to change the system. This was true when Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland despite losing the popular vote. It was true after the elections of 1960 and 1968. It will be true today.

In every instance, however, the country avoided civil strife and accepted the outcome. And the reform proposals disappeared quickly.

Changing the system would not make presidential elections more democratic, it would simply remove the states from the process. As a Californian, I am proud to have a voice in determining how my state contributes to the election of a president. Our states conducted free, popular, democratic elections. Every vote counted. Every state chose a candidate. Even today, this process provided yet another peaceful transition of power.