Media want us to believe that the ELECTORAL COLLEGE can create a divided Nation.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Deep political divisions could lead to splits in electoral, popular votes

• Article by: KAREN TUMULTY , Washington Post
• Updated: October 27, 2012 - 11:47 PM

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Most polls suggest GOP nominee Mitt Romney is in the lead nationally, but surveys in the nine or so swing states are registering a narrow advantage for President Obama.

What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the Electoral College? "I think it's a 50/50 possibility -- or more," said Mark McKinnon, who was a political strategist for former president George W. Bush.

"If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn't just be a possibility, it would be actual," said William A. Galston.

Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, served as a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

That kind of split decision between the electorate and the Electoral College would mark the fifth time in U.S. history -- and the second time in a dozen years -- that the person who occupied the White House was not the one who got the most votes on Election Day.

'More hyperpartisanship'

What has never happened before is an incumbent being returned to office after the majority of the electorate voted to throw him out. Every modern president to be re-elected -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush -- has gotten a bigger share of the vote in their second bid for office than their first, and with it, a chance to claim a mandate. A win in the Electoral College that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote casts a shadow over the president and his ability to govern.

If Obama were to be re-elected that way, "the Republican base will be screaming that Romney should be president, and Obama doesn't represent the country," McKinnon said. "It's going to encourage more hyperpartisanship."

Veterans of the Bush White House understand that problem well. Bush was never able to shake the accusations of some Democrats that he had "stolen" the 2000 election in a recount of Florida votes that required a U.S. Supreme Court decision to determine the winner. Then-Vice President Al Gore had won the popular vote that year by 500,000 votes.

"A close election is a polarizing event, and a discrepancy between the popular outcome and the electoral vote only adds to the polarization," said Karen Hughes, who served as a counselor to Bush. "It rubs a raw nerve even rawer."

'Worst of all ... outcomes'

That kind of split decision may well happen more often in the future, if the nation's political system remains both deeply and closely divided.

Polarization amplifies the quirkiness of the Electoral College system by encouraging the candidates to ignore the nation's biggest population centers, except for fundraising purposes, and to devote their energies to winning over that narrow slice of voters who live in states where the Election Day outcome is in doubt.

The Electoral College is an artifact of an era when the lack of organized political parties and the difficulties of travel and communication prevented candidates from waging a national campaign.

Given those impediments, the Founding Fathers were leery of a direct popular vote as a means of gauging the popular will. But they also did not want to give Congress the power to select a president. So they set up a process by which each state would be allocated a number of electors, equal to the total of its House members and senators.

If one candidate carries the popular vote, but the other wins the Electoral College tally, it will raise new questions about whether the Electoral College should be abolished -- something that would require a constitutional amendment.

Also, if that scenario were to bear out, the prospects for a drawn-out recount would be high in swing states where the results are close.

But a bigger problem would arise after that, as the new president tries to govern and forge consensus on how to tackle a host of major problems.

An election in which the popular will is thwarted is "the worst of all possible outcomes," Galston said. "We are in a situation now where the government of the United States needs to regain its capacity to act after this election. We are facing some risks that are both serious and imminent."

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In this contentious election campaign don't take your eye off the moving ball . . . .

the Obama administration and the liberal progressive radical democrat machine, is capable of FRAUD and CHEATING at a level never before witnessed in this nation.

If the democrat machine needs to change the outcome of the ELECTORAL COLLEGE results, they will COMMIT FRAUD and CHEAT to make it happen.