Across the Nation

Parties split on Electoral College review

More than a third of this year's Democratic presidential electors say they want to re-examine or scrap the Electoral College that takes the final vote on the next person in the White House, while fewer than one in ten Republicans think the nation should even consider tinkering with the system, an AP survey found.

The partisan breakdown is not surprising, given that the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, may lose the presidency while winning the popular vote. Republican George W. Bush, if declared the victor in Florida, would win the electoral vote.

The Associated Press interviewed 342 electors, or nearly two-thirds of the 538-member Electoral College.

"It's silly," said Gore elector Lana Boldi, a political coordinator for United Auto Workers in Michigan. "We're 200 years or more past when we really need that safeguard. I think the average voter is intelligent enough to cast a popular vote."

"It's a well thought-out system. I believe it's just as valid today as it's ever been," said Bush elector W.R. Timken Jr. of Ohio, a manufacturing executive who was also an elector for Bush's father in 1988.

"If it was pure popular vote, the election would be all about the biggest cities and biggest states, and the rest of the country would be forgotten."

Ninety-four Democratic electors, or 35 percent of the 267 Gore electors certified so far, wanted either reform or debate on the future of the Electoral College. That comes to 58 percent of 161 Democratic electors reached by the AP.

Twenty-five of that group wanted to abolish the system entirely and 27 wanted to reform it. Just under a third, or 52, said keep it the way it is. Fifteen would not comment or had no opinion.

Republican electors, on the other hand, clearly stood on the other side of that argument. Of 181 Bush electors, only 14 had any doubts at all; only one of those suggested abolishing the system. A full 73 percent said the system works fine. Thirty-five electors had no comment or offered no opinion.

"We do not live in a democracy. It's a representative republic," said South Carolina elector Danny Faulkner, a college physics professor.

One thing for sure - there are no swing voters here.

The presidential campaign was defined by the undecided political center. This post-election campaign is in the land of the partisan patriot, the unswerving.

Thousands protest School of Americas

COLUMBUS, Ga. - Police arrested 1,700 protesters who had marched into Fort Benning yesterday demanding the closing of the Army's School of the Americas, a training center for Latin American soldiers.

About twice that number, including actor Martin Sheen, had entered the west-central Georgia post, chanting and carrying cardboard coffins and crosses, while others continued the protest outside the gates.

The demonstrations have been spearheaded for 11 years by Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who served in Bolivia. Bourgeois blames the school for human rights abuses committed by some of the school's former students.

Army officials termed the charge absurd.

"I'd characterize it as false and as propaganda,'' Maj. Gen. John LeMoyne, the post commander, said at a news conference today. "Roy's thesis is based on emotion and falsehood.''

Wearing plastic parkas, many of the protesters shivered in near-freezing temperatures and occasional rain as they marched to a point where they were halted by military and civilian police.

Shipments begin for Clinton library

LITTLE ROCK - In the hours before dawn, 50 tons of President Clinton's memorabilia were unloaded yesterday into an old auto dealership remodeled to store the country's largest presidential collection.

The first shipment for the Clinton Presidential Library contained paintings, antiques, books, and gifts from the heads of state of foreign countries, said Skip Rutherford, coordinator of the privately funded $25 million project.

The gifts, which actually belong to the United States, have "high intrinsic value and high diplomatic value," Rutherford said. "They are one of a kind."