I hate to be argumentative, and would have passed on writing this e-mail if you hadn't emphasized the word "EXACTLY" in the paragraph emphasizing the importance of New Mexico, Iowa, and Maine to Sen. Kerry's Presidential hopes. ("Gore barely won New Mexico and Iowa, and won Maine by a fairly comfortable margin. Those three states possess EXACTLY the 16 votes Kerry needs, so he's not dead yet, by any means.")
In point of fact, these four states are not likely to deliver the needed 16 votes to Kerry, even if he carries all of them, since Maine is a state without a 'winner-take-all' statute. Instead it allocates two of its electoral votes by Congressional district. With the race this tight, it is almost certain that Bush will carry at least the more conservative rural Congressional district, and thus obtain the needed one extra electoral vote to throw the race into the House of Representatives -- where he will certainly be elected by the new House of Representatives.
Assuming Maine allocates its Vice Presidential electoral votes on the same basis (I haven't researched in that level of detail), then the new Senate will pick the new Vice President and that really will be a crap-shoot, particularly given the current Vice President's tendency to tell sitting Senators to 'go fuck themselves'. (Remember the Sen. Leahy gaffe?)."
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