Electoral Votes

PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. - Sitting in the P.G. Juice `N' Java just three weeks before Election Day, Teta Martin says she hasn't seen many signs of the presidential contest that has gripped the nation for the past year. "Where is it? We've seen nothing. I think California is being left out," says Martin, 65, of San Mateo. "Personally, I think they know what's going to happen here." Across the table, Teta's sister Casey Gilles, 55, who lives in Carson City, Nev., says she is experiencing a much different election season, with President Bush and Sen. John Kerry both showing up to stump in her state - one of a handful of battlegrounds that could decide this year's winner - and TV advertisements saturating the airwaves.

ZANESVILLE, Ohio - Of all the 17 or 18 anointed swing states of 2004 - states up for grabs in the presidential election, according to the polls and the collective wisdom of the campaign strategists - none is getting more attention now than Ohio. Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry campaigned diligently here on their cross-country bus tours, reminding Ohioans that as much as or more than the voters of any other state, they hold the election's outcome in their hands. It's an argument, to be sure, that simultaneously is being made by both sides to the electorates in all of the other states deemed pivotal in November and close enough to go either way. The Republicans have no trouble making their case, inasmuch as no presidential nominee of their party has ever won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State.

1825: The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. 1950: Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists. 1964: The Beatles made their first live appearance on American television on The Ed Sullivan Show. Associated Press

Time has come to abolish Electoral College Much has been said and written about the recent presidential election and how it impairs the legitimacy of our new president. Let me just add that our Constitution, as drafted in 1787 and enacted in 1789, had a number of defects. By amendment, 26 of those have been cured -- and a number of these shortcomings were gross restrictions on voting. In 1870, the 15th Amendment permitted African-Americans to vote. Since 1913, the 17th Amendment has provided that citizens may elect their U.S. senators.

WASHINGTON - Closing the book on the tumultuous 2000 election, a good-natured Vice President Al Gore methodically blocked his supporters' attempts yesterday to prolong the drama and proclaimed George W. Bush the nation's 43rd president. Although Gore appeared to have accepted his fate, Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried repeatedly to challenge the assignment of Florida's 25 electoral votes to Bush. "I must object because of the overwhelming evidence of official misconduct" in his state, said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, a Florida Democrat, before he was shouted down by Republicans yelling, "Point of order!

With all the suspense of a television rerun, Al Gore and Joseph I. Lieberman carried Maryland again yesterday but lost nationwide by a razor-thin margin in the only election that really counts. That obscure political institution known as the Electoral College met at the State House in Annapolis and in state capitals across the country to officially choose the next president and vice president. Taking part in a history-drenched ritual that some contend has outlived its usefulness, Maryland's 10 electors - loyal Democrats all - went unanimously for Gore and Lieberman, as expected.

WASHINGTON - A landslide it wasn't. By at least one measure, George Walker Bush's election was a triumph of historic proportions: the narrowest victory in a presidential contest since the early 1800s. The number of votes needed to change the outcome was the smallest since the current system of popularly electing presidents began in 1828, according to a soon-to-be published paper by James E. Campbell, a University of Buffalo political scientist. Up to now, the closest finish was the 1876 election, which turned on about 400 votes in South Carolina.

He was the son of a former president, sharing his father's first name, although their middle names were different. He had just won the most bitterly divided presidential election in history, losing the popular vote but prevailing after a series of wrenching decisions. "Fellow-citizens," he said in his inauguration speech, "you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the recent election, which have resulted in affording me the opportunity of addressing you at this time. ... Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence."

WASHINGTON - With the presidency at stake, the Supreme Court will assemble today to seek a constitutional formula for ending the conflict over the last unsettled electoral votes - Florida's decisive 25. The nine justices, returning to their courtroom for the second time in 10 days to confront the disputed election, will hold a 90-minute hearing starting at 11 a.m. on the case aptly titled Bush vs. Gore. A decision could come today or tomorrow. The court has given no sign that it expects to wrap up the election controversy in this one case.

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Al Gore's decision to bet it all on the Florida Supreme Court is a case of making a virtue out of a necessity. He is down to his last match. If there has been a surprise in the way the Florida fiasco has played out, it has been the almost solid backing Mr. Gore has received from his fellow Democrats. Even now the party caucuses in both the Senate and House are offering what House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt again called "strong support" to the Democratic nominee.