Heller: Scrap ‘winner take all’ system

Monday, Nov. 13, 2000 | 11:23 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- In future elections, Nevada's electoral votes could be split between presidential candidates.

Secretary of State Dean Heller has asked for a bill to be drafted for the 2001 Legislature to scrap the "winner take all" system and have the electoral votes distributed to the candidates based on their popular vote.

Heller, a Republican, said the confusion surrounding the presidential election demonstrates the need to change the way the electoral vote is tabulated in Nevada.

He especially doesn't like a system in which a presidential candidate may win the popular vote but lose because he didn't get the electoral votes.

Vice President Al Gore, according to unofficial numbers, has a majority of the popular vote, but if Texas Gov. George W. Bush wins Florida's 25 electoral votes he would be elected president. Bush currently leads the Florida recount.

Nevada has four electoral votes, and Bush will receive all four because he received 49.5 percent of the vote to Vice President Al Gore's 45.9 percent. The state is expected to gain an electoral vote after the 2000 Census tabulations are complete.

Erik Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, predicts there will be "all kinds of bills in every state" to change the electoral process because of this election. He explained only a federal constitutional amendment can change or eliminate the Electoral College. But the states have the right to decide how their votes are apportioned.

Maine and Nebraska, he said, are the two states that don't have a "winner take all" system for electoral votes. In those states, the electoral votes are given to the winners in each congressional district. Two votes are given to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes statewide.

Given that formula, Gore would have received one of Nevada's electoral votes and Bush only three.

On its face, Herzik said dividing the electoral votes seems fair. For instance, a presidential candidate could carry California by one vote and receive all 54 of its electoral votes. He said the present system was adopted to protect the small states.

But under the present system, he said, the candidates pay the most attention to the big states, which have the most electoral votes. "I would rather win California by one vote than all of the mountain states by 100,000 votes. That's why they don't come to Nevada or Wyoming or the others."

Heller advances the same argument -- candidates would campaign in Nevada if there were a chance to pick up part of the electoral vote. "In close races, your state would come more into play. ... There would be a greater opportunity for the candidates to come to Nevada."

The secretary of state said he's not sure the Legislature will go for his proposal. Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, has already said he doesn't favor a change in the electoral voting system, Heller said.

But, he added, "It makes sense for the Legislature to discuss it to see which way it wants to go. What is happening in this presidential race strengthens the argument for this."

Critics point out that divvying up the electoral votes would give minor parties a greater role and might necessitate runoff elections to guarantee that the eventual president got at least 40 percent of the votes. Runoffs could even become auctions in which minor parties sold their support, critics say.

For instance Ross Perot got 19 percent of the popular votes but no electoral votes. A runoff election could be decided by the endorsement of a third party candidate under these circumstances.

Nevada's Republican presidential electors are Raggio and Edwina Pryor of Reno and Margaret Peggy Wutke and former Assemblywoman Jane Ham, both of Las Vegas. Alternates are Milton Schwartz of Las Vegas and Trudy Husbeck from Northern Nevada.

They will go to Washington, D.C., in mid-December to cast their ballots.