The Electoral College is responsible for the hundreds of miles Lawrence Democrats will put on their cars this election season.

The volunteers say they have to drive to Missouri to make a difference in the campaign, with President Bush a presumed landslide winner in Kansas.

But if the election system were different — if presidents were chosen by popular vote or by a different form of the Electoral College — the Democrats might feel more effective putting their campaign skills to use in their home state.

“It’s a product of the system, that people have to go to these grand measures like taking road trips to places where they can make a difference,” said Jennifer Kane, associate director of Driving Votes, a national organization that encourages volunteers to campaign in swing states.

But the system isn’t the same everywhere.

In most states, all of a state’s votes in the Electoral College go to the candidate who wins the popular vote there.

‘You energize people’

But in Nebraska and Maine, electors representing members of the U.S. House of Representatives are chosen by popular vote in each congressional district. Electors representing the state’s two U.S. senators go to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote.

Nebraska adopted the system in 1991; Maine, in 1972.

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“To me, it was a matter of good government,” said DiAnna Schimek, the Nebraska state senator who proposed the new electoral system. “It was a matter of how you energize people to be active in their state in presidential politics, and maybe even attract a presidential candidate from time to time. I do think the fact we have this electoral system really energizes people to work.”

That energy apparently hasn’t translated into increased voter turnout, said Neal Erickson, Nebraska’s elections director. And no candidate has yet won a congressional district while losing the entire state.

“I’m not sure there have been a whole lot of changes,” Erickson said. “Part of it was maybe candidates will be a little more attuned to the state, and there’s a possibility they’ll campaign a little more here. But a lot of it was just people’s frustration with the electoral college system as a whole.”

Abolish it?

It’s a frustration Caleb Morse, president of the League of Women Voters of Douglas County, can understand. The league has advocated abolishing the Electoral College in favor of choosing presidents by popular vote.

“As an undesirable second best, we’d want a reformed Electoral College,” Morse said. “In as much as the red states and blue states (for Republican and Democrat candidates) have the predetermination of electoral votes in the states, it discourages participation, whether you’re for the candidate who will win the state or who will lose it.”

But even if that’s true, a change in the way Kansas allocates its electoral votes is a longshot. It would require a statutory change from the Legislature, which has had both houses controlled by Republicans all but five times during the 20th century.

Little incentive

And with Republican presidential candidates consistently winning all of the state’s electoral votes under the current system, Republican legislators wouldn’t have incentive to change things.

“Kansas is a Republican state,” said Don Myers, the Derby Republican who leads the House Ethics and Elections Committee. “We wouldn’t have anything to gain.”

Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 730,049 to 428,728, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office.

Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh agreed that chances of any change to Kansas’ electoral system seemed slim. And he said he didn’t think it would help voter turnout.

“Whenever I see surveys of why people don’t vote, the Electoral College isn’t among the top 10 reasons,” said Thornburgh, a Republican.

Thornburgh said he would argue those in Kansas voting for John Kerry weren’t voting in vain.

“Some people say Democrats voting in a Republican state don’t make a difference,” he said. “But I think George Bush governs different because he lost the popular vote. He doesn’t have a mandate like the Reagan landslide. He has to reach out and build some consensus this way. So I’d argue those votes do matter.”