Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise,
organize, campaign, or worry about the voter concerns in the small, medium, or large
states (35) where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the
state-by-state winner-take-all rule enacted by 48 states, under which all of a state's
electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate
state.
A candidate has won the Presidency
without winning the most popular votes nationwide in one of every 14 presidential
elections.
In the past six decades, there have
been six presidential elections in which a shift of a relatively small number of votes
in one or two states would have elected (and, in 2000, did elect) a presidential
candidate who lost the popular vote
nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill would
guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50
states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would
be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Candidates would need to
care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing
states.
The bill would take effect only when
enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that
is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into
effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential
candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by
the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes
for president. The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral
College, which would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states
with as little as 3% of the U.S. population. Historically, virtually all of the major
changes in the method of electing the President (for example, ending the requirement
that only men who owned substantial property could vote) have come about without federal
constitutional amendments, by state legislative action.
The bill has passed 29
state legislative chambers, including one house in AR DE, ME, MI, NM, NC, and OR, and
both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA, RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by
Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61
electoral votes -- 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into
effect.
see
www.NationalPopularVote.com
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