Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: No hurry to change

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000 | 9:49 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

"I have thought about this for a long time. I've always thought we had outlived the need for an Electoral College, and now that I am going to the Senate, I am going to try to do what I can to make clear that the popular vote, the will of the people, should be followed." These are the words of Sen.-elect Hillary Clinton of New York.

I don't doubt that the new senator has given a great deal of thought to the value of keeping the Electoral College. So have I and so has anybody who has taught government and history in our schools or held state or federal office. Students have always brought up the question of the possibility of an unfair result such as happened in 1888 when presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland with fewer popular votes and more electoral votes. This happened because Cleveland won by large majorities in several states and Harrison won by narrow margins in many of the states supporting him. Out of 11,381,032 votes cast, there were 110,476 more for Cleveland than Harrison.

Last week Jonathan G.S. Koppell, an assistant professor at Yale, wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Several small-population states have disproportionate influence in the presidential election. Wyoming, for example, has 0.18 percent of the U.S. population and 0.93 percent of the votes in the electoral college. These numbers suggest that Wyoming enjoys 412 percent more representation in the electoral college than it would under a proportional system. Other Bush states that are overrepresented include Alaska (152 percent), North Dakota (117 percent) and South Dakota (99 percent). Gore benefits in some cases as well. Vermont (146 percent), the District of Columbia (128 percent) and Delaware (108 percent) are all overrepresented in Gore's favor."

Koppell goes on to point out that California has 12 percent of the U.S. population, but "only 10 percent of the electoral vote (or 16 percent fewer electoral votes than it would if votes were determined by population)."

None of this should come as a surprise to either Vice President Al Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush. They knew about these possibilities before declaring their intent to seek the White House as their residence for the next four years.

As a person who has lived in small states most of his adult life, I also have been aware of the greater value of my vote than those cast in New York and California. This inequity has usually encouraged candidates to visit and campaign in many states with small populations. Even with the electoral system some candidates still refuse to "waste" their campaign time in places such as Idaho, Wyoming and even Nevada. Why spend valuable time in Laramie when a single stop in San Diego has a bigger impact than visiting every town in Wyoming?

Professor Charles Fried of Harvard writes in the New York Times about what would probably happen if we changed to a popular vote:

"We could become a more centralized state, like France. A constitutional amendment to elect the president by the plurality of the popular vote would redirect the candidates' attention to national audiences. National issues would drive out any attention to local concerns or personalities. National television would play a larger role than it does now. And this would lead to a further Starbucks-ification of our political life, where every locality and region would slowly homogenize with every other into one undifferentiated mass. Economic interests -- large business groups, unions and special interest groups whose focus was national, not local -- would play a still larger role in presidential politics."

So excuse me, but I won't be clamoring for getting rid of the Electoral College and using the popular vote, because the shortcomings of the present system are minimal when considering what could be lost by a change. That's right, I have no intention of moving to California or New York.

If we should be concerned about anything, it should be the ho-hum attitude of half of our eligible voters who don't go to the polls.