New York Times: "I've been putting it off. This summer, I had hoped to get around to abolishing the Electoral College. But it's been so hot. Now I'm willing to delegate. Maybe other people should handle it. Like members of Congress. Or Norman Lear.
The 2008 presidential election is, by my calculations, at least three years away. But it's been on my mind for at least three reasons. First of all, I just read Jess Walter's swell thriller 'Citizen Vince,' the tale of a guy in the witness protection program with a subplot involving Election Day in 1980, and I realized how much, despite all logic, I'm itching to vote. 'It's a nice, small feeling,' thinks Walter's protagonist of the moment in the voting booth, making his choice. Second, the National Governors Association descended on Des Moines last weekend. All I had to read were the words 'governor' and 'Iowa' and I knew the campaign had already started, that someday I might have to get used to the unlikely sound of President Vilsack or the unlikelier President Pataki. And, finally, all the recent chitchat about the disproportionate amount of counterterrorism money received by the State of Wyoming reminded me of the looming fiasco of Wyoming's disproportionate electoral voice in the event of an Electoral College tie.I would rather not spend the next Election Day the way I spent the last one: wondering just how much to hate Ohio. My vote was written off because I live in the perpetually sewn-up state of New York. But because the citizens of that battleground state could not make up their gosh darn minds, their votes actually counted. They chose the current president of the United States."