poetrychic

ok, i challenge all you guys to write letters, send emails and/or make phone calls to your state representatives and especially the governors to implement this plan and get us out of the damned dark age of electoral college presidencies!!!

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - If John R. Koza gets his way, American voters will never again have to wonder about the workings of the Electoral College and why it decides who sits in the White House.

Koza is behind a push to have states circumvent the odd political math of the Electoral College and ensure that the presidency always goes to the winner of the popular vote.

Basically, states would promise to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most support nationwide, regardless of who carries each particular state.

"We're just coming along and saying, 'Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?'" said Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc. "I think that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the office."

The proposal is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but George W. Bush put together enough victories in key states to win a majority in the Electoral College and capture the White House.

So far, Maryland and New Jersey have signed up for the plan. Legislation that would include Illinois is on the governor's desk. But dozens more states would have to join before the plan could take effect.

The idea is a long shot. But it appears to be easier than the approach tried previously — amending the Constitution, which takes approval by Congress and then ratification by 38 states.

The Electoral College was set up to make the final decision on who becomes president. Each state has a certain number of votes in the college based on the size of its congressional delegation.

Often, all of a state's electoral votes are given to whomever wins that state's popular vote. For instance, even someone who wins New York by a single percentage point, 51-49, would get all 31 of the state's electoral votes.

This creates some problems.

One is that candidates can ignore voters in states that aren't competitive. If the Democrat is clearly going to win a state, the Republican has no reason to court its minority of GOP voters there and instead will focus on other states.

Another problem is the possibility of a result like that in 2000, where one candidate gets more votes overall but the other candidate gets narrow victories in just the right states to eke out a majority in the Electoral College.

National Popular Vote says its plan would change all that.

"What's important to the country is that it would make presidential campaigns a 50-state exercise," said Koza, a Stanford University computer science professor.

Here's how it would work:

States forge an agreement to change the way they allocate general election votes. The agreement would take effect once it's been approved by states with a majority in the Electoral College, or 270 votes.

At that point, the states would begin awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who carries each state.

If the candidates tied in the popular vote, each state would give its electoral votes to the candidate who carried that particular state — basically the same system used now.

There are critics. The downside, they argue, is that a close presidential election would require recounts not just in one or two key states, but throughout the entire country.

They also say it would further reduce the influence of small states as politicians focus on such places as voter-rich California, New York and Texas.

"Any way you look at it, I think smaller populations have a greater voice under the current system than they would under a national popular vote system," said North Dakota state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, a Republican who voted against joining his state in National Popular Vote's agreement.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has not decided whether to sign his state's legislation to join the plan, his office said. When he was in Congress, Blagojevich co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College in 2000.

Legislation endorsing the National Popular Vote plan was passed in California and Hawaii but vetoed by their governors. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would run "counter to the tradition of our great nation, which honors states' rights and the unique pride and identity of each state."

Koza believes the agreement proposal would standardize the way states award their electoral votes, give every voter equal influence and keep candidates from ignoring some states in favor of battleground states like Ohio and Florida.

He noted that neither presidential candidate visited Illinois in 2004, even though it has a population of about 12.8 million.

"The Republicans wrote it off and the Democrats took it for granted," Koza said, "and that's typical of two-thirds of the states."

Plan would sidestep Electoral College - Yahoo! News


something like this could effect all sorts of change in the way elections are run from implementing verifiable voting machines on down...

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"it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation, yes we can!"

MarkMiller

Am I misunderstanding the basics of this? It sounds vaguely like Mob Rule. Isn't that a bit drastic for a Presidential election? Mind you there needs to be some Democratic Reform to our system.....especially seeing how it went in 2000, but I may not fully understand how this would benefit the country. Couldn't it lead to ballot stuffing? I mean look at the way other countries have problems with a straight vote.

I am going to have to look into this further.

poetrychic

the bottom line of this is that the person who would be elected president would be the person who gets the most popular votes rather than the person who wins states like new york, california, florida, ohio, illinois and can't pick up anything else....

like koza said, 2000 wouldn't have happened if the popular vote really had any significance...the same could be applied to what's currently happening with the delegate/superdelegate argument, the will of the people is spoken yet some antiquated system is actually going to pick for us...what's the point in voting? with a change in the system, i bet we would have more than 53% of the population voting because then people's votes would actually count, we would be more represented in washington as by the people for the people...

as for ballot stuffing, it would create a demand for truly verifiable electronic voting machines, ones that actually have system records to prevent any "coding errors", erasure of votes or touch screens that just don't seem to line up with the person you're actually voting for...thus, ending the cloud of suspicion that has hung over our elections for the last several years...

there is all kinds of election reform that could take shape through an idea like this

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"it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation, yes we can!"

julia

This is a great idea.

This was written up in the New Yorker sometime last year.

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The candidate does not speak for the campaign.

MarkMiller

To bad it had to be presented to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Definitely will look further into this.

julia

The Reps are scared to death of this since there are more registered Democrats than Republicans.

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The candidate does not speak for the campaign.

Teri B.

I few states have inacted legislation on this issue.

N.J. lawmakers OK Electoral College move

The_Heretic

Bullshit, since the electoral college for U.S. senators was overturned alowing popular vote to determine those seats. Ergo, this not only has historical precedent but also maintains the trajectory of improving the electoral system.

It also dries up the excuses for barring third party candidates from fair ballot access...

No, letting a brely known battery of unelected elites decide who wins is a drastic measure to prevent the best candidate from winning.

SOME?? A shitloat of a hell of a lot is a better way to say it. When candidates see their ballot petitions thrown away- even if they have five times the minimum of legitimate and required signatures, that tells me the system is broken just as Edwards says.

No, it means horrible candidates aren't as easily pushed onto us. It means no more duopoly stranglehold. It means One Person/One Vote.

Except they don't. In fact this is one of the biggest advantages of a parlimentarian system.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

poetrychic

you're feeling a bit frisky this evening he said he'd look into it more

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"it was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation, yes we can!"

The_Heretic

You've seen Jack Nicholson in Hoffa right?

"I'm fighting for the right to collective bargaining. I'm taken into a room and told 'Take it or leave!'" Well, sir, I reject that!"

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium