Electoral College

IN THEIR attempt to defend John F. Kennedy from the disclosures by Seymour Hersh in his critical look at Kennedy in ''The Dark Side of Camelot,'' Sun columnists Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover bemoan Mr. Hersh's ''liberties with the truth.'' But perhaps they have been less than forthright in their search for the truth when they conclude that Mr. Hersh's version of what happened during the 1960 presidential election ''will reinforce the lament of die-hard Nixonites that Kennedy did indeed steal the presidency.

MILWAUKEE -- President Clinton, acting as though his lead in the polls was one point instead of 20, used the traditional Labor Day campaign kickoff not as a beginning, but a wrap-up of anine-day campaign swing through the great battleground states of the Midwest.Everywhere he went, the president asked enthusiastic crowds to help him "build a bridge to the 21st century." It is an image White House strategists say they believe will reinforce the differences in age and outlook between Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are understandably pleased by a new round of opinion polls showing President Clinton leading Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole by double-digit margins at a time when the Republican nominee-presumptive should be riding high.The surveys also show that the president's favorable ratings have been rising steadily while the Republicans have been directing most of their fire at one another.This is obviously good news for the White House and Democrats in Congress preoccupied with their own survival next November.

WASHINGTON - The Constitution does not require the federal government to make the census as accurate as possible, and imposes no duty on officials to adjust population figures later to make up for failing to count many minorities, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday.In a major setback for the nation's cities, the court undid the victory the cities had won in a federal appeals court in 1994. The appeals court decision would have required the government to make a statistical "fix" in the 1990 population total, or explain away the need to do so.As a result, there will be no shift in seats in the House until after another census in 2000, no altering of the states' votes in the Electoral College when it meets in January, and no reallocation of up to $100 billion a year in federal money passed out to states based on population figures.

SOME WHOSE job it is to speculate about politics once thought Gov. Pete Wilson was a dream candidate for president, then decided he was going nowhere and now are moving back toward the first view.That's because after many stumbles he is doing better in the polls in his home state of California. Not a lot better, but enough to make people take notice.Before he made his formal announcement of candidacy late last month, Wilson was running behind Sen. Bob Dole for the Republican nomination by 20 percentage points (17-37)

WASHINGTON -- His would-be Republican presidential opponents have launched their candidacies on David Letterman, donned flannel shirts to show they are men of the people and milked their announcement speeches by giving them three times.President Clinton, by contrast, has quietly opened his re-election headquarters in a nondescript office building in downtown Washington without brass bands or balloons.His critics, and even some friends, find the idea of a separate Clinton campaign headquarters deliciously redundant.

WASHINGTON -- One thing the successful first year of Vice President Al Gore has done has been to quiet the concern over presidential succession that was heard in many quarters -- especially Democratic -- over having his predecessor, Dan Quayle, a heartbeat away from the presidency over the previous four years.While Republicans have had their criticisms of Gore, they have not begun to approach the ridicule heaped on Quayle during his tenure as vice president. If fate were suddenly to elevate Gore to the Oval Office, it's unlikely there would be any great hue and cry. Unlike Quayle, he has managed to remain gaffe-free while getting high marks for serious responsibilities entrusted to him.Perhaps that's why the hearing room was practically empty the other day when Chairman Paul Simon of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution took up a question of concern to some presidential scholars: What would happen if both the popular winners for president and vice president in November died before the Electoral College met to tabulate the votes in mid-December, or before its results were formally counted and reported by Congress in early January?

Don't abolish the Electoral CollegeBrian Walton's June 5 letter does not give strong reasons for ending this unique but successful method of presidential selection in the Electoral College.Yes, the House of Representatives chooses the president if the Electoral College fails to award a majority to any candidate. But as Mr. Walton indicates, the last time that happened was in 1824, almost 170 years ago, when the country did not have two political parties.And yes it is possible for the winner in the Electoral College to get fewer popular votes than his opponent.

Washington. -- Ross Perot's embryonic presidential candidacy is rekindling interest in the election of 1824 -- or, strictly speaking, of 1825.Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.) worries about a "constitutional catastrophe," his odd description of the constitutional procedure for coping with the remote possibility that no candidate will win an electoral vote majority. Mr. Glickman, his lucidity crippled by his apprehension, says, "The election could be thrown into the Electoral College and could be thrown into the House of Representatives thereafter."

WASHINGTON -- In case you didn't notice, in all 50 states yesterday the actual election of Bill Clinton as the next president took place. Electors for the winners of the popular vote on Nov. 3 gathered in each of the states and formally cast their ballots in the Electoral College, probably the most notable college without a campus in the country.When you went to the polls last month, you technically cast your ballot for these electors, previously selected by the campaigns of the candidates.

The editorial "Flunking Electoral College" (Dec. 16) suggests that the Electoral College should be abolished because "the system disenfranchises many voters and sometimes results in the candidate who wins the popular vote losing the presidency." The editorial then cites the law Gov. Martin O'Malley signed that "would award Maryland's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of who wins in this state." My question is: Who is disenfranchised if this law takes effect?

Yesterday in Annapolis, 10 electors representing Maryland in the Electoral College cast their ballots for Barack Obama. The Electoral College is an institution enshrined in the Constitution. It also is an archaic threat to our democracy because the system disenfranchises many voters and sometimes results in the candidate who wins the most votes losing the presidency. Just ask Al Gore; he won the popular vote but lost the White House because his electoral vote tally fell short. In many states, the Electoral College discourages potential voters who know the candidate they favor is likely to lose in a winner-take-all state election.

Trooper arrests suspect after armed robbery A state trooper on patrol apprehended a suspect in the armed robbery of a convenience store early Saturday in Harford County, and a second suspect was arrested by backup officers, Maryland State Police said. The trooper had observed suspicious behavior by a man standing outside a 7-Eleven on Philadelphia Road in Abingdon and parked his patrol car nearby to watch. While the trooper waited for assistance, the two men ran out of the store, carrying an undisclosed amount of money and property, police said.

As the second-smallest county geographically in Maryland, Howard generally doesn't have the political heft of the state's biggest jurisdictions. But when the real presidential election is held in Annapolis on Dec. 15, two of the 10 Maryland electors casting ballots for Barack Obama are to be Howard Dels. Guy Guzzone and Elizabeth Bobo, both Democrats. Neither knows why they were selected by the state party, they said. Despite the popular vote nationally, the Electoral College, under the law, elects the president, a fact that upset those same Democrats in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the national popular vote but won the electoral tally.

If you thought the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were cliffhangers, how about the election of 1916 that faced off incumbent Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, against the Republican Party's nominee, Charles Evans Hughes, former associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Several days before the election, The Sun published an article reporting that an agreement had been reached with the Gas and Electric Co. and that the election results would be announced throughout the city by the blinking of the 5,643 electric lights that lined Baltimore's streets and alleys.

It is fitting that Maryland is pioneering the effort to create a multistate compact to ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote wins the White House. After all, it was Maryland's electoral college system for electing state senators, first established in 1776, that the U.S. Constitution's drafters later used as a model for creating the Electoral College as we know it today. Last year, Sen. Jamie Raskin of Montgomery County spearheaded the successful campaign to get the General Assembly to become the first signatory on what's known as the National Popular Vote plan.

Electoral College protects small states Is there anybody else in Maryland who is as incensed as I am over the latest outrage by the House of Delegates? In its zeal to spite President Bush and redress a perceived flaw in our voting process, the House voted for a bill that violates the Constitution of the United States by taking all the electoral votes from Maryland and throwing them to the winner of the national popular vote ("Delegates approve popular-vote bill," April 3). Notice that I did not say the popular vote of Maryland but the national popular vote.

The General Assembly has passed legislation that would bypass the Electoral College and elect the president by national (raw) popular vote. It is unconstitutional and bad for every voter in Maryland and in the United States. Gov. Martin O'Malley should not sign it. The bill is unconstitutional because the Constitution says "that no state ... shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent." This plan commits Maryland to a national compact that would go into effect after states with electoral votes representing a national majority - conceivably as few as 13 of the largest states - sign on to it. This would eliminate senatorial electoral votes and therefore harm every small and medium-size state, without its consent.

Maryland may soon become the first state in the nation to cast its vote toward making the U.S. Electoral College moot. Under legislation approved yesterday in the House, Maryland would commit all 10 of its electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide. The change would go into effect only if enough states to constitute an electoral majority follow suit - and 47 are reportedly considering it. The state Senate approved a similar bill last week, and Gov. Martin O'Malley has pledged his support, too. It's not hard to understand why - and not just because of the sting he and his fellow Democrats may still feel from the 2000 election when Al Gore captured a half-million more votes than George W. Bush but lost the electoral ballot in the Florida fiasco.

Senate budget plan will not raise taxes The Sun's editorial "Reality bites" (March 26) wrongly asserts that the budget adopted by the Senate assumes the president's tax cuts will expire in 2010. As one of the authors of the budget, I can assure readers that the Democratic budget makes no such assumption. Our budget does not include or require a tax increase. Quite to the contrary, our budget extends middle-class tax relief and provides a two-year fix for the alternative minimum tax. And it allows for new tax relief and the extension of other expiring tax cut provisions, as long as they are paid for. In fact, over the five years of our budget plan, projected revenues come to $14.827 trillion, which is almost identical to the $14.826 trillion in revenue the administration projects for that period under the president's budget plan.