Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.19.2004
Colorado initiative could alter way electoral votes are divided
THE NEW YORK TIMES
DENVER - Colorado voters have delivered the state for the Republican presidential candidate in every election in the last half century, except when Bill Clinton won by a whisker in 1992 and Lyndon B. Johnson swamped Barry Goldwater in 1964.
But if a ballot initiative called Amendment 36 is approved by the voters here on Election Day, the facade of unanimity will shatter, and in one stroke a new small state's worth of definitively Democratic Electoral College votes will be created in the heart of what has been the solidly Republican West.
Amendment 36 would make Colorado the first state to distribute its electoral votes on the basis of its popular vote. The change would take effect immediately with this year's election, which means that President Bush and Sen. John Kerry would share Colorado's nine electoral votes, but neither would get all.
Political experts say the implications for the election are deeply uncertain. A Rocky Mountain News/News 4 poll released Friday showed Bush and Kerry in a statistical dead heat here.
Bush received just under 51 percent here in 2000, which, under the proposal, would be good for five of the nine votes.
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