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REFORMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND SUPPORT FOR PROPORTIONAL OUTCOMES

The system used to elect US presidents, the electoral college, was called into question following the 2000 presidential election, when Al Gore received over 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush nationwide but ultimately lost the election following a lengthy court battle over Florida’s electoral votes. Although George W. Bush had failed to win the popular vote, his plurality of 537 votes over Al Gore in Florida netted all of the state’s 25 electoral votes, giving him a total of 271 electoral votes, one vote more than needed to secure a majority in the electoral college. In 2004, George W. Bush received a majority of the popular vote but would have lost the election had he had failed to secure a plurality in the state of Ohio. These two cases suggest a potential legitimacy problem for the electoral college that raises serious questions about the need for reform. Replacing the electoral college with another system would require a constitutional amendment that most agree would be extremely difficult to pass. Nevertheless, the US Constitution gives states the power to choose the method of selecting presidential electors. Most states employ a winner-take-all system on a statewide basis. However two states, Maine and Nebraska, select their electors on the basis of whether a candidate carries a congressional district. In 2004, an initiative appeared on the ballot in Colorado that proposed dividing the state’s nine electoral votes on a proportional basis. In a close election, this would effectively give the loser up to four electoral votes, which could change the outcome of a presidential election. The use of the initiative process to advance electoral reform is a growing trend in the United States. Recent initiatives include efforts to limit legislative terms (various states, 1992–8), reform redistricting (Arizona, 2000), provide for election-day voter registration (California and Colorado, 2002), adopt preferential voting (Alaska, 2002), reform the primary system (California, 1996 and 2004; Washington, 2004; Colorado, 2002) and extend the use of vote by mail in general elections (Colorado, 2002; Oregon, 1998). The reliance on popular support to achieve reforms that change the rules of the game raises questions about the ability of voters to reason through complex choices. Critics of direct democracy often raise questions about voters’ ability to make informed decisions. The electoral college, for example, is believed to be poorly understood (Center for Voting and Democracy 2004). Moreover, while most modern democracies have systems that are based on proportional representation, the United States has little experience with such a system. How, then, can voters make reasoned decisions on matters that they know little about? For these reasons, the Colorado initiative provides a unique opportunity to assess how Americans view the electoral process and reason about electoral reform. When voters were confronted with a decision on whether to approve a change in the process, were