Protest the electoral college

I was shocked and dismayed by the bizarre reasoning in your Nov. 15 editorial, "Electoral College a fair system." Each of the justifications you cite for retaining the Electoral College is, in fact, a reason for removing it.\nYou argue that, under a popular vote, certain states might be ignored. This happens under the Electoral College: Neither major candidate spent significant time campaigning in non-swing states.\nVoters were ignored in states with small (Alaska), medium (Indiana) and large (Texas) populations.\nMinority groups are particularly hurt by the Electoral College. In every state but Maine and Nebraska, all of the electoral votes go to the candidate who gets more votes; the runner up gets nothing, even if he or she represents 49.9 percent of the people in the state.\nA popular vote actually reduces the likelihood of the election coming down to a few hundred votes. Al Gore clearly won the popular election by about 200,000 votes; no amount of recounting is going to shift that many votes to George W. Bush.\nThird party candidates are badly hurt by the winner-take-all Electoral College. In 1992, Ross Perot earned 19 percent of the popular vote, but didn't get a single electoral vote. The Electoral College resulted in exactly the situation you worry about: Bill Clinton was elected with only 43 percent of the popular vote.\nMost importantly, the Electoral College violates the principle of "one person, one vote." A voter's power is equal to the number of electoral votes their state gets, divided by the population of that state. A voter in Wyoming has almost four times as much power as a voter in California.\nAs a consequence, we might have Bush as our next president, even though more Americans voted for Gore!\nWe can't change the rules for this election; it will be resolved by the Florida courts and the consciences of the electors. On the other hand, we must seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to abolish the archaic Electoral College. Coordinated national protests are being organized at www.countercoup.org.\nPeter Drake\nGraduate student