In view of what we are about to undergo in the United States next week, it is time for a brief review of U.S. Government, 101A

The Electoral College

The president and the vice president are the only electice federal officials not chosen by direct vote of the people. They are elected by the members of the Electoral College, an institution provided for in the U.S. Constitution.

On presidential election day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every 4th year, each state chooses as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress. In 1964, for the first time, as provided by the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. the district of Columbia voted for 3 electors. Thus, with 100 senators and 435 representatives, there are 538 members of the Electoral College, with a majority of 270 electoral votes needed to elect the president and vice president.

Although political parties were not part of the original plan created by the Founding Fathers, today politcal parties customarily nominate their lists of electors at their respective state conventions. Some states print names of the candidates for president and vice president at the top of the November ballot, others list only the electors' names. In either case, the electors of the party receiving the highest vote are elected. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow for proportional allocation. (Note: Colorado is voting on this matter next week and could become the third state to do so.)

The electors meet on the first Monday after the 2nd Wednesday in December in their respective state capitals or in some other place prescribed by state legislatures. By long-established custom, they vote for their party nominees, although this is not required by federal law; some states do require it.

The Constitution requires electors to cast a ballot for at least one person who is not an inhabitant of that elector's home state. This ensures that presidential and vice presidential candidates from the same party will not be from the same state. (In 2000, Republican vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney changed his voter registration to Wyoming from Gov. George W. Bush's home state of Texas.) Also, an elector cannot be a member of Congress or hold federal office.

Certified and sealed lists of the votes of the electors in each state are sent to the president of the U.S. Senate, who then opens them in the presence of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives in a joint session held in early January and the electoral votes of all the states are then officially counted.

If no candidate for president has a majority, the House of Representatives chooses a president from the top 3 candidates, with all respresentatives from each state combining to cast one voter for that state. The House decided the outcome of the 1800 (Thomas Jefferson) and 1824 (John Quincy Adams) presidential elections. If no candidate for vice president has a majority, the Sentate chooses from the top 2, with the senators voting as individuals. The Senate chose the vice president following the 1836 (William H. Harrison) election.

Under the electoral college system, a candidate who fails to be the top vote getter in the popular vote still may win a majority of electoral votes. This happened in the elections of 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1888 (Benjamin Harrison), and 2000 (George W. Bush).

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Having reviewed the procedures, I must say that this needs to be be changed. Since it is part of the constitution, a constitutional amendment would be needed to change things but that would be a slow and cumbersome process so I think the people of Colorado are doing the right thing by trying to pass a ballot proposition to allot the votes proportionately as Maine and Nebraska already do.

The whole system is so screwy that for the first time in recent memory, the candidates are campaigning like crazy in Nevada (5 electoral votes) Utah (5), Idaho (4), Alaska (3), etc. Usually these states are all but ignored as only the big states like California, New York, and some others are looked upon as being important. Due to the closeness of the upcoming election Nevada and other small states may become the swing states instead of the usual ones like Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, etc. Bush has all but ignored California because he feels he has already lost this state. If our 55 electors were to be alloted proportionately, all candidates would be more inclined to campaign here or in other states alloting votes proportionately, not just the "undecided" swing states. They say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Well, in this case it was broke from the beginning. Let's get it right for once and all.