Electoral College needs this tweak

With respect to the Electoral College, Columnist Ed Murnane says that "perhaps there have been complaints, but probably not within the memory of current readers."

Mr. Murnane must believe that he writes for the younger set, since there were plenty such complaints following the 2000 Presidential election when George Bush won the Electoral College vote, with help from the U.S. Supreme Court, while losing the popular vote.

There are several problems with the Electoral College method of electing a president, one of which is that it effectively disenfranchises many voters. For example, here in Illinois it is futile to vote for a Republican candidate for president because Illinois reliably votes for the Democrat, and so all the Electoral College votes go to that candidate. Similarly, in a state such as Texas, those who vote for the Democratic candidate are wasting their time.

Certainly, a better way of doing things, if we wish to keep the Electoral College for some nostalgic reason, would be to make the number of Electoral College votes that a candidate gets in any state proportional to his or her share of the popular vote, instead of the winner-take-all process that it generally is now.

Dick Page

Naperville