Let Americans select their president

Posted 8/14/2008 12:15:00 AM

By Jim Scarantino

Barack Obama and John McCain are loving New Mexico way too much.

McCain put up his first national general-election television spot in this state. He hasn’t been off New Mexico’s airwaves since May.

Obama’s advertising buys have kept pace. He is also building an unprecedented ground organization. With 23 campaign offices, he promises a more intense ground game than New Mexico has seen in any presidential election.

The campaigns’ millions of dollars will be augmented by heavy spending from “independent” groups. The political parties will pour millions more into the bank accounts of the state’s newspapers and radio and television stations.

All the love is great. But it’s a little ridiculous. And it’s wrong. The only reason New Mexico is getting this level of attention is because, after more than 200 years as a nation, Americans still cannot vote directly for their president. That decision is made for them by the Electoral College.

As Heath Haussamen wrote in an earlier post, the Obama campaign acknowledges that it cannot win the presidency without winning New Mexico. The McCain campaign is seeing the same numbers. Our paltry five electoral votes are critical to reach the magic 270 Electoral College votes that will determine the identity of our next president.

Because of the winner-take-all system in place in 48 states, the battle is not for the undecided or reluctant voters in states that will certainly go either for Obama or McCain. If, for example, Obama has 51 percent of the vote locked up in California, another vote there means nothing to him. Because the national popular vote total is legally meaningless, Obama gains nothing by running blue state subtotals on McCain. The same goes for McCain in red states like Texas, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

New Mexico has fewer voters than Los Angeles, Dallas or New York City. But none of those cities will likely receive the same per capita investment of time and money that will showered on New Mexicans in Las Cruces, Deming or Datil. I happen to prefer Datil to Dallas, but in an honest democratic system, a vote cast in Catron County should count the same as a vote cast anywhere else, even in Texas.

The undemocratic Electoral College nullifies millions of voters in large or politically homogenous states while inflating the value of individual votes in small and swing states like New Mexico. With the slim margins that have decided the winner in 2000 (less than 400 votes) and 2004 (less than 6,000 votes), every vote cast in New Mexico matters in selecting the next president. The same can’t be said of millions of votes in other states.

Do you know who picks the president in N.M.?

Even the artificially exalted voters in New Mexico are deluded in believing they are participating in a democratic process. They don’t get to select the president, either. It is the five electors from New Mexico who hold that power. I don’t think I would be far off the mark in estimating that 99.9 percent of New Mexicans can’t name one of the electors who cast New Mexico’s Electoral College votes. In other words, hardly anyone in New Mexico knows who really picks the president.

As for the New Mexicans who voted for Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, their votes didn’t count at all. Because of the winner-take-all system, every one of our electoral votes went to Gore in 2000 and Bush in 2004, as though New Mexico had been unanimous in the decision.

In 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 the Electoral College made someone president against the wishes of most voters. At those times, the deceit and tyranny of the Electoral College was in the open. Maybe it will happen again this year. Regardless, it’s time for America to stop living a lie. It’s time to get to work abolishing the Electoral College.

Scarantino has been recognized as one of the country’s best political columnists by the American Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. His work has been published in more than 50 newspapers. You can contact him at jrscarantino@yahoo.com.