Hunting The Muse

Colorado's Electoral Votes

It appears that my home state of Colorado is considering a twist on the Electoral College that could make the election even more exciting.

Colorado has 9 EV's. States are normally winner-take-all, and a candidate needs 270 EV's to win. Colorado has been pretty solidly for Bush lately, so they've been counting on those EV's.

Each state, however, is allowed to determine how to award those EV's. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all. What Colorado is considering doing is awarding them proportionally. So if Bush gets 55% of the vote and Kerry gets 45% of the vote, Bush would get 5 EVs and Kerry would get 4 EVs.

This could have a huge effect on the election given how close the two candidates have been. Bush only won 2000 by three EVs.

But what makes it even more exciting is that if it makes it on the ballot, which seems likely, we won't know if Colorado's EVs will be awarded proportionally until election night itself! The ballot will be voted on that night, and if it passes, the EVs will be awarded proportionally, and if it doesn't, it will be winner-take-all. This means that even if Colorado is firmly for one candidate or another, Colorado's EV picture could still be tight if the ballot measure results themselves are tight.

Now, is this generally a good idea? I think it is. It enfranchises more voters and gives them more of a voice within a state. Now, if California, a solid Democratic state, were considering it, I'd be a lot more worried, because California is a solidly Democratic state. So I can see how Republicans would be alarmed by this!

What would be a better approach is to have all states switch to this proportional method at once. Perhaps states could pass measures that would say that they would switch to the new method, but only as soon as a set number of other states do as well.

What would be even better is if they allowed fractional EVs. Otherwise, battleground states with an even number of EVs would be quite boring, while battleground states with an odd number of EVs would get all the action.

All in all though, this will have a large effect on future elections. If Colorado becomes proportional, and in future elections it is shown that the vote is pretty close, candidates aren't going to want to spend millions of dollars to fight over one puny EV - when otherwise they'd be fighting over nine.

Posted by Curt at August 1, 2004 06:09 PM