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Post from Cork in the Water:
Illinois signs bill to effectively eliminate Electoral College
By Adam - Apr 8th, 2008 at 11:19 am EDT
Also listed in: Abolish The Electoral College | National Popular Vote (Reform the Electoral College)
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This week Illinois joined Maryland and New Jersey in passing the National Popular Vote bill, which would guarantee that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in all 50 states will win the Presidency, regardless of the outcome in the Electoral College.

The National Popular Vote plan is a state-based plan, not requiring a constitutional amendment. It's an ingenious and politically practical way to implement nationwide popular election of the President.

Check out this website for more information. Also, you can join the partybuilder National Popular Vote site here.

The National Popular Vote bill has now been signed into law in states possessing 46 electoral votes. This is one-sixth of the 270 electoral votes needed to bring the National Popular Vote interstate compact into effect.

Reader Comments
  
no electoral college
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By Moses Apr 8th 2008 at 11:29 am EDT
Get rid of the electoral college and you will have Presidential candidates campaigning in maybe ten states and forgetting the rest of the country. You will have those same ten states getting the majority of federal spending to keep voters happy, and the rest of the country getting scraps.
Re: no electoral college
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By Adam Apr 8th 2008 at 11:31 am EDT
Isn't that what we have now? Election after election, the presidential candidates only care about the "swing states." Under the current system, your vote only matters to the candidates if you're in a swing state that has a chance of going either way. Under a reformed system, every person's vote is equal, regardless of what state they live in.
Re: no electoral college
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By Moses Apr 8th 2008 at 11:37 am EDT
No, that isn't what happens. Yes, candidates will perhaps pay more visits to swing states, but not always. By going strictly to a popular vote, the East and West coast elitists with more population have more weight in the outcome, while lower population state have less say. A 51 percent victory in New York for example, would outweigh 80-20 votes for the opponent in small states. A better solution would be to allocate electoral votes according to each state's percentage, similar to the way the Democrats do their nomination. In only one election in history would the vote have been thrown to the House for determination according to the constitution .
Re: no electoral college
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By Adam Apr 8th 2008 at 11:56 am EDT
I think you're misunderstanding the proposal. If the electoral college is out of the picture, it doesn't matter what state the vote is. Carrying New York versus carrying a small state is completely irrelevant. If you win all of the big states but only get 49% of the national popular vote, you lose. The only thing that matters is national popular vote and state boundaries are irrelevant.
Re: no electoral college
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By Adam Apr 8th 2008 at 12:00 pm EDT
... unless of course you are saying that smaller states "count less" because they have fewer voters. But, that's democracy right? The whole point of the national popular vote plan is to take the votes away from States and give them to people. States shouldn't elect the president, people should. Of course if you think that states should be electing the president, then an electoral college system would probably be preferable for you. I do ask that you please stay polite in commenting here, even if you disagree with what I have to say.
Re: no electoral college
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By Arius Apr 8th 2008 at 12:23 pm EDT
Smaller communities have different concerns than larger ones do. The founders recognized that if you go with a strictly popular vote, you'll have four wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Besides, if you think the electoral college is a distortion of the popular will, the Senate is an even greater distortion. Wyoming has less than 1% of the nation's electoral votes, and it is WAY distorted compared to its tiny population. But Wyoming has 2% of the vote in the Senate.

The right approach, if this is your belief, is to get rid of the Senate. Since the electoral college is your congressmen + your senators, then getting rid of the senate fixes it naturally.
Re: no electoral college
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By Richard M. Mathews Apr 8th 2008 at 10:05 pm EDT
You say, "A 51 percent victory in New York for example, would outweigh 80-20 votes for the opponent in small states."

There is a hidden assumption in your reasoning that campaigning one day in a big state will get you as big a percentage bump in the vote as spending that day in a small state. It isn't true. For a state that is ten times as big, it isn't a bad guess to figure it will cost ten times as much to campaign there with the same degree of effectiveness.

That means your real choice with fixed resources is between trying to gain one point in a state with 20 million people or ten points in a state with 2 million people. Either way, you pick up the same number of votes.

For directly interacting with voters, there is some gain in effectiveness when campaigning in a densely populated area due to reducing travel time and costs; but you can't get to very many voters that way.

Grassroots efforts have better success at personal interaction with voters in the less densely populated areas, where people tend to know their neighbors much more.

Ad buys tend to be priced in proportion to how many people they reach.

The result is that getting a vote is just as hard no matter where you go.
  
FORGET NOISE & SIMPLY PASS THIS
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By MICHAEL on The Beach Apr 8th 2008 at 12:13 pm EDT
I agree that we need to go to simple pop vote...
  
History of the Electoral College
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By Diana M. Painter Apr 8th 2008 at 1:59 pm EDT
Just so we are all on the same page, here is the history of the electoral college.

Link

As I believe Mel Brookes once said "A long time ago people were idiots, and not much has changed".

Another way we could change the electoral college is by work by allocating the electoral college votes by popular vote. Maine and Nebraska do this now. This idea seems to be ignored in popular commentary. Of course, this can all change when we do another census in 2010, but it is healthy to think about.
Re: History of the Electoral College
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By Richard M. Mathews Apr 8th 2008 at 10:19 pm EDT
Maine and Nebraska do not allocate electoral votes in proportion to popular vote. They are winner-take-all per congressional district (plus two votes winner-take-all statewide) rather than just winner-take-all statewide. There is no linkage between the overall popular vote and the distribution of the electoral votes, though it is more likely in a close race to give one of four electoral votes to the runner-up.

If you win 51% in each of Maine's two congressional districts, you get all four electoral votes.

If you win 99% in one district, 49% in the other district, giving you 74% overall, you only get three of the four electoral votes.

Getting more of the statewide popular vote resulted in getting fewer electoral votes.

Truly allocating electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote of the state would be a crude approximation of a nationwide popular vote if you could make it happen everywhere, but there is no movement to do so and no likelihood that it would happen.

The national popular vote movement, on the other hand, has some momentum going and could make it.
  
It would save a lot of time
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By Edison Carter Apr 8th 2008 at 2:11 pm EDT
for the destructionists to just tell us what it is they like about America and its government, rather than listing every little thing they hate. Tearing things down is easy. Even limbaugh can do that. The hard part is building them back up. The contract on America doesn't say anything about that part.