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States consider new path to picking president
Conversion to direct vote gathers support as lawmakers advance bill
By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau
First published in print: Monday, December 15, 2008
ALBANY — Barack Obama was elected President on Nov. 4, right? Wrong.
Actually, he'll be elected today, when the Electoral College votes.
Here in New York, the vote will take place in the ornate state Senate chamber, where the electors — who, technically speaking, are the people you voted for last month — will gather.
While the Electoral College vote is procedural, it's the central act in what a growing chorus of critics say is a woefully outmoded system for choosing a president.
Members of the National Popular Vote movement are working to create a system that essentially circumvents the Electoral College. Under this plan, the various states could enter a multi-state compact to allocate their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gathers the most popular votes.
Once enough states agree — enough to marshal 270 votes — the electoral system could be circumvented. (New York has 31 votes.)
"It's kind of a back-door approach to doing away with (the Electoral College)," said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, D-Bronx.
He and Sen. Joseph Griffo, R-Rome, are sponsoring a bill that would let New York join the compact.
Debates over the Electoral College have raged for decades, but abolishing it would require a change to the Constitution.
While the plan sounds outlandish, four states — New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii and Maryland — have already approved the idea. "We've got more and more people asking the question, 'Why not?' instead of 'Why?'," said John Cordo, a lobbyist supporting the plan.
The movement should be doubly appealing for states like New York, which is so reliably Democratic that presidential candidates rarely campaign here, said Christopher Pearson, an organizer with the National Popular Vote movement.
"Nobody really recognized that states could make this change by working together," said Pearson. His group was created in part by John Koza, a California computer scientist who also devised the lottery scratch-off ticket.
"They're just waiting now for other states to come on board, and when you hit this trigger of 270 it takes effect," said Pearson, who added that 22 individual legislative chambers nationwide have already approved the plan.
One of the main advantages is that it would broaden the playing field for presidential races, which are increasingly focused on swing states.
For example, Pearson said, 55 percent of candidate visits and money during the last two months of this year's campaign were in only four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia.
There are opponents to the plan.
"It's borderline unconstitutional," said Mike Hough, public safety and elections task force director at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative-leaning think tank.
Hough says the plan might need congressional approval since it amounts to an interstate compact.
And he wonders what would happen in an election as tight as the chaotic 2000 race. The Bush-Gore recount in Florida, he said, ................http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=750521 |
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