A close race could inspire constitutional amendment

If today's vote resembles that of 2000 in that the winner of the electoral vote is not the same candidate as the winner of the popular vote, the Constitution is likely to come under attack. It won't much matter which candidate gets which vote, although given that a constitutional amendment must originate in Congress, it is more likely that the movement will have more impetus if the loser of the election is of the same party as the majority in Congress.
The electoral college is enshrined in the Constitution because the Founding Fathers didn't have an excess of faith in the electorate. There was fear that a charlatan could take advantage of an ignorant electorate, so the electoral college was installed as an insulator. The college also had the effect of making the presidential race not one big election, but a separate election in each of the states and the District of Columbia.
Because of each state gets one electoral vote for each member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the system gives an inordinate weight to votes cast in less populous states. Even those states that have only enough population to merit a single member of the House get three electoral votes. That dynamic, coupled with the need for any constitutional amendment, which requires a constitutional amendment to pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote and then gain ratification by 38 states makes an Electoral College amendment a long shot.
The last time a serious amendment attempt was made was not in 1888, the last time before 2000 that a president (Benjamin Harrison) won in the Electoral College without getting the popular vote. It was following the 1968 presidential election, after George Wallace's strong third-party run raised the specter of no candidate getting an electoral college majority. President Richard Nixon, who won cleanly despite Wallace getting 46 electoral votes, endorsed an amendment to institute direct election. It passed the House, but died in the Senate.
We are generally reluctant to jump on constitutional amendment bandwagon. But a direct election amendment might have some appeal.
Not because we are convinced that the electoral college is an anachronism, but because were are wary of the effect of the most talked about "fix" of the electoral college that would not require an amendment.
Two states, Maine and Nebraska, have adopted state laws that abandon the winner-take-all approach to electoral votes for one that awards the state's electoral votes proportionately. Residents of Colorado are voting today on an initiative that would have the same effect.
The problem with state-by-state proportionate division of electoral votes is that it gives the party in power in each state even greater incentive to gerrymander the state's congressional districts. Virtually every state in the union that has come under one-party domination has seen reapportionment abuses . The reapportionment fight got so nasty in Texas last year that Democratic members of the legislature fled the state to avoid having to vote on a Republic reapportionment that was being pushed by House Whip Tom DeLay.
It is bad enough to see congressional control being held hostage to blatant partisanship, it would be even worse to see the results of a presidential election manipulated through state-by-state reapportionment.
The best result, as unlikely as it might seem at this moment, would be a decisive victory in today's presidential race.