Proportional split of electoral votes on Colorado ballot

DENVER — The presidential candidate who wins a majority of the vote in Colorado next month could take all nine of the state’s electoral votes, or he could take five.

It all depends on the outcome of Amendment 36, a state ballot measure that would make Colorado the first state in the nation to split its electoral votes proportionally, replacing the state’s winner-take-all system.

Amendment 36 was written to take effect this year, which means its effect would be felt immediately. That means, for example, that even if President Bush wins a majority of the vote, Sen. John Kerry still could snare as many as four electoral votes.

Such a division would have prevented either presidential candidate from garnering the required 270 electoral votes in 2000, sending the election to the House of Representatives. A similar split also could determine the outcome in this year’s close race, a detail not lost on national politicos, who will be watching the vote on Amendment 36 closely.

Coloradans will accept or reject the measure on Nov. 2, the same day as the presidential vote.

So far, the pros are running ahead of the cons. A statewide Ciruli Associates poll found 51 percent in favor of the measure and 37 percent against it. The rest were undecided.

“We believe this will increase voter turnout. If you ask people why they don’t vote, they’ll say, ‘It’s because my vote doesn’t count,’ ” said Julie Brown, director of Make Your Vote for President Count, the pro-Amendment 36 group.

Analysts note that the race is still young. The anti-36 forces, led by Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, argue that the measure would destroy Colorado’s national influence.

Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli predicted that the measure’s popularity would drop below 50 percent, now that the opposition is weighing in.

“I think it will have a very difficult time passing,” Mr. Ciruli said. “The Republican Party is uniformly against, there are some Democrats against it, the governor is raising money against it, and the editorial pages are coming out against it.”

The fear is that a proportional system of allocating electoral votes would make Colorado irrelevant nationally by turning it into a state with a net vote total of one. Although Republican voters hold the edge in Colorado, there are enough Democrats to make nearly every statewide race a 55 percent to 45 percent split.

“If you’re a presidential candidate with any sanity, you’re going to look at Colorado and say, ‘If I do nothing, I’ll still get four electoral votes, so why should I do anything?’ ” said Katy Atkinson, the Republican political consultant who leads the opposition group Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea.

At a debate yesterday sponsored by the Arapahoe Republican Men’s Club, Ms. Atkinson argued that the state’s influence in Congress also would dwindle to practically nothing.

That could prove disastrous for the state on issues ranging from public land use to base closures.

“All things being equal, if they’re choosing between Arizona with 10 electoral votes and Colorado with one net vote, who do you think they’re going to choose?” she said. “Colorado would become the least significant state in the nation.”

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