CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that Ohio is the eye of the storm of this presidential election. Just ask Howard Dean, who told a Cincinnati crowd last month: “Ohio is going to be the swing state. Ohio will be the Florida of 2004. We have to win here.”

But if it’s a Florida comparison that Governor Dean seeks, he should head for the Rockies. There, he’ll find a ballot measure that could put the outcome of one state’s presidential vote in doubt–and, yes, could require the courts to decide, as they did four years ago, who gets to sit in the Oval Office.