Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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How Many Barry Richards Are There?

Friday, December 8, 2000

(Go to the Mullings Update page for the
latest from Florida)

If the Florida Supreme court reverses Circuit Judges Sauls and/or Clark on top of their previous reversal of Judge Lewis, the annual Leon County Bar Association Secret Santa and Pot Luck Dinner is going to be a fairly strained affair.

I have now watched enough courtroom activity that I think I have a good shot at passing the Bar exam in Florida. I know I would ace election law and trial procedure.

I mentioned, the other day, that attorney Barry Richard was my new hero. Now, I want to launch an official investigation into just how many Barry Richards there actually are. A Barry Richards has argued every case, in every courtroom, every day for the past month.

Maybe it's like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Every time a lawyer in Leon County falls asleep, he wakes up as a Barry Richard, goes into a courtroom, and successfully argues a case for George W.

OK. Now that we know everything there is to know about the Electoral College here's my plan:

- Rather than the winner-take-all method of choosing electors
which is in place in 48 states and the District of
Columbia we should look at the Nebraska and Maine
methods and adapt to those.

- To review the bidding, the number of electors a state gets
is computed by adding the number of Members of Congress
plus two U.S. Senators. The result is the number of
electors.

- We now know - and we will know even better by the end of
today's meeting of the Florida Legislature - that the
Constitution gives absolute power to the legislatures
of the states to decide the method of choosing those
electors.

- What if we got all the state legislatures to move from winner-
take-all in a state to a Congressional District by
Congressional District method.

- That is, a candidate would get one electoral vote for getting
the most votes in a Congressional District. If candidate
A got the most votes in, say New York 1 on Long Island,
he would get that electoral vote. If candidate B got
the most votes in a Congressional District in Queens he
would get THAT electoral vote. And so on.

- Whoever got the most total votes in a state would get, as the
Popular Vote Bonus, the two electoral votes for the Senators.

- A Republican would not be completely shut out of New York or
California; a Democrat would not be completely shut out of
Indiana or Alabama.

- Some portion of almost every state would be in play and the
calculus necessary to cobble together the necessary 270
would be far different than it is today.

- Third party candidates would have a shot at truly affecting the
outcome by winning a handful of CDs forcing the two major
parties to widen their appeal.

- And, none of this would require a Constitutional Amendment to
accomplish.

My work here is done. Hi-yo Silver. Away!

A really good idea was propounded the other day by Washington media maven, Bill Greener. Given the 50-50 nature of the Senate, Bill suggested that the Senate come up with a power sharing arrangement which would have the committee chairmanships switch parties every year. Half of the committees would be chaired by Republicans and half by Democrats each year. The next year they would switch.

As close as the Senate is, and given the fact that you really need 60 seats to ram things through anyway, why not invite the Democrats into the water and share the pool which would, at a minimum, make it somewhat less attractive for them to, um, foul the water.

Democratic Senators, in their out year, would find it useful to work with the Republicans during the year of THEIR chairmanships because repayment would never be more than a year away and vice versa.

And, Democrats in the House would be far less likely to tie up the entire Congress for the next two years as their principal political strategy because their colleagues from the other side of the Rotunda would not be as likely join in such a resistance movement.

Trent Lott would still be the Majority Leader and schedule legislation, but it would be a much more collaborative effort. Maybe, as a sign of good-will, Trent could buy a cowboy hat for Minority Leader Tom Daschle like he wore to The Ranch the other day. If Daschle agrees to wear it, we'll know we've got a deal.

Then they would both look like a cross between Stevie Ray Vaughn and Madeline Albright.

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