By now, almost everyone has chimed in on the presidential election results, be these results official or not. Some are finding important lessons in this mess while others are finding new bull's eye targets for their dartboards-I hear Ralph Nader is a popular one in Democratic households, although he is quickly being replaced by the likes of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa "Butterfly" LePore.
I figured that I'd throw in my own two chad as well.
From the get-go, I'll admit that had I written this column Nov. 8, I would have bashed the Electoral College. But upon further review and numerous discussions with those more knowledgeable than myself, I've changed my mind. Instead of highlighting the inadequacies of the Electoral College, I think this election really shows the merits of this oft-criticized system of electing our commander-in-chief.
Many have said that if Texas Gov. George W. Bush proves the winner, it will be on a technicality, since his popular vote total is less than Vice President Al Gore's.
But this view misses the point, for the popular vote is not the foundation of this country-after all, this country's official name is the United States of America. Although the Constitution begins with the words "We the People...," it is essentially the 50 states that frame the nation's laws and direct its course. In the same vein, who the 50 states want as the president is more important than who the American people want-and that's how it ought to be.
This may seem like a strange claim to make, but there are very good reasons for it. Just imagine how much abolishing the Electoral College would change the character of the presidential election, especially the campaigns. Without the Electoral College, a 5 percentage-point swing in California would be more important than the combined vote total of the entire state of Delaware. There would be little incentive for presidential candidates to hunt for votes in the areas without large concentrations of voters. Why would either Bush or Gore bother to take their campaign trails through the Dakotas when the same half-a-million votes could be obtained by pushing for a greater voter turnout in Florida, New York or Texas?
Instead, by having a winner-takes-all system, candidates are currently forced to spend some time in every state because the risks of completely ignoring small states can add up. Although Florida is proving to be the key to victory this year, one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that out of the 29 states Bush carried, 19 of them were worth less than 10 electoral votes each. But when combined, these states accounted for more than half of Bush's total electoral vote.
Some have also stated that the Electoral College doesn't change much because a candidate can still clinch the presidency solely by focusing on the larger states. For example, adding up the electoral votes from California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia would be enough to win the presidency.
But that's exactly the point. Look at this list of states. If you can find a platform that wins you the majority of votes in each of these states, congratulations-you've also found the golden middle and you're likely to sweep the rest of the states as well. Any man who can unite the above-listed states truly deserves the Oval Office.
And the best part of this political engineering is that the opposite holds true as well. You cannot win the presidency without winning at least one of these states. In this manner, winning the election is not a matter of getting just any votes-you have to get votes from a variety of states.
The system, of course, is not without its drawbacks. After all, under the Electoral College system every vote does not count equally. In the 2000 election, a single vote cast in Oregon, Wisconsin or Florida was more valuable than a single vote in California, Texas or Connecticut. Had an additional 5,000 supporters cast their ballots for Al Gore in Texas, the effect on the election would have been insignificant. But if these ballots were cast in Florida, Al Gore would now be preparing for the presidency instead of making announcements five minutes prior to Monday Night Football.
But which would you rather have-a system where the candidates ignore the same low population areas of the nation year after year or as a system where the importance of a single vote rises exponentially as the race for a particular state grows tighter? I'd take the latter any day.
This is why I think the true lesson of the 2000 election isn't the cliché "every vote matters so go vote in the next election kids." If we look past all the recounts, challenges and pregnant chad we can see an election that highlighted the utility and the purpose of the Electoral College.
Marko Djuranovic is the medical center editor of The Chronicle and a Trinity junior.
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