Colorado Crisis

UPDATE: 8/18 @ 2:50 PM

USA Today reports that a proposal to allocate electoral votes in proportion to the percentage of the popular vote won by each candidate has made the ballot in Colorado.

Electoral-vote.com points out this could cause another world class headache for the Supreme Court, since proposal supporters want it applied to this year's race and it would likely shift the states electoral tally from 9 for Bush and 0 for Kerry to 5 for Bush and 4 for Kerry (Colorado is considered a longshot possibilty for the Democrat, but its close enough that Kerry could probably garner enough of the vote to pick up 4 electoral votes). In a close race, that could be the difference and give the election to Kerry. But obviously, such a result would immediately be challenged by Republican leaders.

Since I got this link from one of the sites, this is a good time to promote two websites that are invaluable to anyone following the political campaign. Tripias.com and Electoral-vote.com both take the latest state polls to show what the electoral vote would be if the election was held today. While obviously polling is an inexact science, and the public mood is always in flux, these still do a great job keeping me informed.

For the record, as of 12:30 AM on Wednesday, Electoral-Vote had Kerry up 327 to 211, while Tripias had it 316 to 222 in favor of Kerry. Missouri was the only differing point between the two sites.

NEW: Volokh Conspiracy also comments on this, as well as giving a link to a more in depth analysis by Ohio State Law Professor Peter Shane.