Tom Swift Writer’s Notebook

Imagine if you opened a newspaper and learned the results of a national election in which the “winner” received a half-million fewer votes than the loser. That would seem odd, likely prompting you to read on. Then you read that the election hinged on a series of sketchy details — confusing ballots, a mysterious and massive voter purge, and partisan decisions about recounts — in an area of the country whose highest elected official was the “winner’s” brother. You would probably scoff, assuming the election was conducted in a banana republic an ocean away. But out of curiosity you kept reading, where you discovered the outcome was ultimately decided in a vote by the country’s highest court, which includes several members appointed while the “winner’s” father was in the executive branch.

No need to rub your eyes. Yes, that really did happen in America.

Eight years have done nothing to make the decision palatable. If anything, the Supreme Court’s conduct in Bush. v. Gore seems all the more reckless and embarrassingly partisan. (If you want to relive the horror, I highly recommend Jeffrey Toobin’s important book. As it happens, I watched the fine feature film based loosely on his work as that film was winning an Emmy on Sunday.)

Whatever your views of the 2000 presidential election it was hardly democracy’s finest hour. For some it was easy to dismiss. Let’s move on, they say. It’s over, man. Done with. Stop talking about that. Dude, I’m watching Idol on my iPhone! Even if you leave aside the innumerable number of human beings around the globe whose lives were profoundly and permanently changed — or ended — as an indirect result, the 2000 election should not be forgotten. Instead, it should serve as a rallying point to make federal elections fairer.

In an ideal world, by now, eight years later, we’d have abolished the Electoral College. Not only does that system allow popular vote losers to “win,” the Electoral College creates a landscape in which some votes count more than others. In a low-population state such as Wyoming, for example, each elector represents nearly four times the same number of people as does an elector in California. Which blows the one-person, one-vote mantra to smithereens.

Using fairness as a guide, shouldn’t every vote count the same, whether you live in Cody, Wyoming … Sacramento, California … or Baltimore, Maryland?

And yet here we go again. Another presidential election is approaching and with each day the focus is aimed more and more at a handful of “battleground states” rather than on the will of the entire country. Imagine if all votes counted the same. Democrats might compete in Mississippi and Republicans might take citizens in Massachusetts seriously. After all, if we’re electing the eminent representative of all of the people, it’s only logical that worthy candidates should be forced to speak to their full would-be constituency. Seriously, if you’re a Democratic candidate for president, you don’t even have to locate Wyoming on a map much less worry about attracting the state’s voters.

Voters, too, should have incentive to remain in engaged. If you’re a Barack Obama supporter in Alabama or a John McCain supporter in New York, what’s the point of canvassing your neighborhood or, frankly, taking the time to vote?

There was a time when the Electoral College served a purpose, but it long ago outlasted its usefulness. Like other 18th century inventions, the Electoral College is outdated. It should go the way of the spinning jenny.

Yet the unwieldy step necessary to change the Constitution is not necessary to ensure that the 2000 debacle is not repeated. (Lest we think 2000 was a fluke, consider how close we were — some fifty thousand votes in Ohio — from another popular-vote-loser-winning scenario in 2004.) We don’t have to wait for the federal government to act. We only have to encourage state representatives to join a democratic movement that has been making progress in various statehouses over the past two years.

The idea, which apparently originated with John R. Koza (the man credited with inventing the scratch-off lottery ticket) and is being advanced by the National Popular Vote campaign, is simple and nonpartisan: create presidential elections in which the popular will of the people is followed. The law would take effect only if states representing an Electoral College majority passed similar laws. Check out NationalPopularVote.com to learn about encouraging bipartisan efforts across the country.

Admittedly, this issue is about as sexy as Michael Moore in a halter-top. But wouldn’t it be satisfying to stir state representatives to create a fairer, freer election of the person who represents us all — the one person who tilts the world more than any other? Wouldn’t you like to know that America is running the most impressive national elections in the world rather than delivering a hypocritical punch line that we’re the world’s model?

If you feel even an ounce of outrage by the disturbing court decision that installed the current administration, perhaps the single best thing you can do is help ensure that the loser never wins again.

This post was added on Monday, September 22, 2008 by Tom Swift at 23:10 and is filed under Soapbox.