By Scott Martelle
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

Remember those grade-school democracy lessons about whoever gets the most votes wins? As lyricist Ira Gershwin once wrote, "It ain't necessarily so." Here in the waning days of the 2000 presidential campaign, political analysts are weighing scenarios under which Texas Gov. George W. Bush could rack up more votes nationwide than Vice President Gore but still lose the election. It hasn't happened in more than a century. Still, it is possible.

"This has been a constitutional crisis waiting to happen," said Jeff Manza, a sociology professor and political analyst at Chicago's Northwestern University. Under the electoral college system, established in the Constitution (of 1787), none of us actually votes for a candidate for president. Instead, we're voting for slates of electors committed to supporting their political party's nominee. (Ironically, most voters have no idea of the identities of the people they are really voting for, the electors who constitute the Electoral College. WFI Editor) The electors for the winning candidate assemble in the state capitals on Dec. 18, where ballots are cast for president and vice-president and forwarded to the president of the Senate - in this case, Al Gore - where they are counted on January 6^th.

Only about half of the states legally require the electors (of the Electoral College) to support the top vote-getter. In California, a wayward elector can be fined $1,000 and be sent to prison for up to three years. In Michigan - a battleground state that some analysts think could swing the election - a vote for Gore is actually a vote for David P. Taylor and 17 fellow Democratic loyalists. (In this way the two major parties have a lock on the presidency, and have been successfully able to lock out third parties. A condition which has created a cozy relationship between the Democrats and the Republicans, even though they have a public image of acting as an opposition to each other. WFI Editor)

Taylor, a lawyer, said he would have no misgivings about playing a role in a Gore electoral victory in defiance of the popular vote. But he said he could see where many voters would not be pleased. "It might be difficult for the average person to accept that, but I don't think it's of revolutionary importance," said Taylor. "People should be aware of how it [Electoral College] works and then if they say this isn't the way we should elect the president, changes might be made."

Such a split result has only happened twice. In 1888, Grover Cleveland won 48.6% of the popular vote but lost in the electoral college to Benjamin Harrison, who received 47.8%. In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel Tilden Smith, who received 51% of the vote. But Hayes prevailed by a single electoral vote. (In addition to these two examples of presidents who were elected by the Electoral College, despite losing the majority of the popular vote for president, there are also two presidents who were elected by the House of Representatives, because the Electoral College deadlocked. Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams were both elected by politicians in smoke-filled rooms in the heyday of corrupt politics. Out of a total of 40 presidents, that means 10% were not elected by a majority of the people; and it suggests that the other 90% were actually serving interests which were concealed from the American electorate, since the very beginnings of the republic. WFI Editor)

The system was designed by the framers of the Constitution (of 1787), who sought a compromise between those who advocated direct election of the president by the masses and those who wanted Congress to pick the president. (Of course, the only "masses" entitled to vote in the first elections under the republic were white propertied males; all others, women, poor whites, free blacks, slaves, native Americans, were completely disenfranchised. WFI Editor) Under the system, each state is allotted electoral votes equal to the number of congressional districts in the state, plus one more for each of the two U.S. senators. The District of Columbia also has three electors.

In all states but Maine and Nebraska, whoever wins the popular vote is supposed to get all the electoral votes (but in an earlier statement, the author points out that only half of the states legally require electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote. WFI Editor) Maine and Nebraska give two at-large electoral to the state winner but award the others based on whoever wins in each congressional district. It takes 270 electoral votes, out of 538, to win. Gore has done well in a few big states, such as California and New York, while Bush has led polls in many states with smaller populations. Big margins of victory for Bush in those states combined with thin victories for Gore in big states could give Bush the most votes, even if Gore gets the most electors.

Not all analysts see the numbers going that way, though. "It's conceivable, but I'm not going to bet my kids' Christmas presents on it," said Bob Beckel, a former campaign manager for Walter Mondale. "I really don't see it in the calculations." (On the other hand, I wouldn't put too much stock in what Beckel thinks, since his main credential is having been campaign manager for one of the biggest losers in the 20^th century. WFI Editor)

Also improbable, experts say, is a tie. When no one candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the winner from among the three top electoral finalists. Each state gets one vote. James Lengle, a government professor at Georgetown University, describes the electoral college as a vestige of the elitist approach of the framers of the Constitution, who sought to mitigate the voice of the masses through political institutions. (Which is coded language for rigging the outcome of elections. WFI Editor)

In the early days of the republic, the only portion of government elected by the people (i.e., property-owning white males), was the House of Representatives, with state legislatures appointing senators (to the U.S. Senate WFI Editor) and the electoral college - selected either by popular vote or state legislatures - picking the president. Over time, though, the nature of elections has changed. U.S. Senators are now elected directly (since about the turn of the 20^th century. WFI Editor), and some states - including California - allow initiatives. "But the electoral college," Lengle said, "is still one of the anachronistic holdovers from the framers' day, where the belief was that indirect democracy was preferable."

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 26 October, 2000, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Electoral College Still Making the Final Call." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.