Losers Can Also Win

THE winner of the general election for president is almost always the candidate who wins the most vote sacross the country. But not always. There is the possibility that the loser in this year's presidential election will inherit the White House. That's because the national election is really 50 individual first-past-the-post races, each state sending a specific number of delegates to the electoral college. A candidate such as President Bill Clinton could be re-elected on the basis of winning slim margins in a dozen large states like New York and California, while losing by large margins in the south and mid-west. The result would be that Clinton would lose the plurality vote, but win the electoral college, something that's happened only three times in US history. In 1824, John Quincy Adams was chosen over Andrew Jackson despite having a plurality of popular votes because he did not have a majority in the electoral college.

The party constitutions in each of the 50 states set out their own criteria for qualifying. Some want petitions; others, like South Carolina, require candidates to put up $7,500. And some leave it to party officials to determine if a candidate is recognised enough to be legitimate. The remaining states decide how to split their delegates through mini-conventions of leading state party members.

On March 7, Senator Bob Dole will sweep New York state's 102 delegates because party bosses including, New York GOP godfather Alfonse D'Amato and Governor George Pataki, have rigged it that way. New York rules have been made so difficult that candidates cannot get their names on the ballot. A candidate must sign up at least 1,250 card-carrying party members in each of the state's congressional districts to qualify. That requires an army of petition gatherers that only the state officials' hand-picked candidate can buy.

Not surprisingly, only Dole, in the field of nine GOP hopefuls, is assured a place on the ballot. Steve Forbes, who spent $1 million to collect enough signatures from party members to get on the ballot, and Pat Buchanan, who qualified in half of New York's 32 districts, should be in but are having their petitions challenged by state officials. The other candidates have not even bothered trying to play by the state rules. Instead, they have launched a court challenge that probably will not be settled until it reaches the Supreme Court.