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ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM WILL SURVIVE DESPITE FLAWS, SAY UGA EXPERTS

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Thursday, November 16, 2000

WRITER: Kathy R. Pharr, (706) 542-5172, pharr@arches.uga.edu

CONTACTS: Hosch Professor Dan Coenen, (706) 542-5301

Russell Professor Ed Larson, (706) 542-2660

ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM WILL SURVIVE DESPITE FLAWS, SAY UGA EXPERTS

ATHENS, Ga. - Despite its flaws - made abundantly clear by the still contradicted results of the nation's presidential election - the electoral college system will remain intact, say two renowned experts in constitutional law and legal history at the University of Georgia School of Law.

"If this election does not create a clear winner, it will be because we questioned the vote in so many states," says law and history professor Ed Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1998. "We are undermining the integrity of the electoral college."

Larson explains that the system was created by the nation's founders as a compromise to give small states a voice in national elections. "It was a protection for the smallest states because they got a disproportionate vote," says Larson. And, despite what is happening in Florida, Larson adds, "The electoral college is much more likely to lead to a clear winner than a general election." Few presidents have been elected by a majority vote of the people, Larson says, but instead, by a plurality. If the electoral college were abolished, he says, splinter groups could divide the presidential ballots, resulting in no clear winner.

Constitutional law scholar Dan Coenen agrees with Larson that changing the electoral college system at the national level is highly unlikely and that reform at the state level is improbable, too, because such reform isn't in the states' best interests. Candidates currently bombard states - even the smallest ones - with visits and profitable campaign promises. If the electoral system were abolished, Coenen says, candidates would visit only the most populous states; and, if some states changed the way they award electoral votes - from giving them all to the winning candidate to dividing them based on the popular vote, as is done in Maine and Nebraska, candidates would ignore those states and campaign where more votes were at stake.

"It seems to me a sure thing that there won't be a change to a popular vote method for president," says Coenen. "Any such change would require a constitutional amendment, which is very hard to do." And as far as a national ballot, which has been suggested by some in response to the uproar in Florida? "The conduct of elections belongs to the states by law," says Coenen, "so there won't be a uniform national ballot. But there will be a lot of attention to ballots following this election, and that may be a real place for reform."

Professor Larson may be reached at (706) 542-2660 and Professor Coenen at (706) 542-5301.

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