Even political junkies who love elections the way the paparazzi love celebrities and can’t pull themselves away from C-SPAN without serious withdrawal symptoms aren’t groaning that they wish the campaign season would last a few more weeks. Some of the candidates may be wishing for extra time to overcome vote deficits, but for many voters, Nov. 3 can’t roll around quickly enough.

They’re here courting our measly seven electoral votes so often that you can’t fling a hanging chad in Iowa without hitting a presidential candidate, his wife or a celebrity campaigning for him. It’s only safe to watch the TV Land network, where the only campaign commercials are the benign and innocent retro messages that JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter used in their campaigns for the White House. We’re counting the hours until it’s over like the campaign spin doctors are counting red and blue states.

Whether the election will actually be over Nov. 3 is debatable, as the quirks of the Electoral College voting system could give us a repeat of 2000’s election that wouldn’t end. Colorado has offered a dandy solution to anti-climactic elections like that one, with a ballot measure to split electoral votes proportionately between candidates. That would make Colorado a “purple” instead of a red or blue state, and the group Make Your Vote for President Count thinks it would increase turnout among voters who think the electoral system robs them of their votes.

The issue has almost gotten lost in the noise of the campaign that has grown increasingly shrill in its final days. But it’s an important ballot issue, and if Colorado voters approve it, it would become effective with this election. That means that even if George Bush gets the majority of votes, John Kerry could grab as many as four of Colorado’s nine electoral votes.

No good deed ever goes unpunished, and so it is with Colorado’s Amendment 36. Some critics dismiss it as a vast left-wing conspiracy to help Kerry’s electoral vote tally, ignoring that it could also cost Kerry the election, and argue it’s just the kind of craziness you’d expect from a bunch of hippies. The opposition group Coloradoans Against a Really Stupid Idea argues splitting electoral votes could make the state meaningless nationally, as candidates wouldn’t bother campaigning in the state because they’re assured of receiving at least some of its electoral votes – as opposed to Iowa and other battleground states, which are getting a disproportionate share of candidates’ attention. Besides, electoral votes are already distributed proportionately in Nebraska and Maine, and they haven’t gone to hell in a hand basket. (Well, maybe those states have headed south, but not because they have rejected the all-or-nothing method of casting electoral votes.)

The 2000 election, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost in Electoral College voting, proved the “winner take all” system to be an 18th Century anachronism that has no justification in modern-day politics. Without hard to achieve constitutional reform, a state-by-state reform movement that’s starting in Colorado may offer the best hope to move elections into the 21st Century.

Beth Dalbey is editorial director for Business Publications Corp. E-mail her at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.