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. Every vote would be counted
for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to
care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing
states.
Now, policies important to the citizens
of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to
‘battleground’ states when it comes to
governing.
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. It does not 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, including ending the requirement that only men who owned
substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have
come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional
amendments.
The bill has been endorsed or voted
for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded
votes in favor of the bill.
In Gallup polls
since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding
all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most
votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The
recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72%
support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular
vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in
recent polls.
The National Popular Vote bill has
passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large
states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District
of Columbia (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31),
North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9),
Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode
Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by Hawaii,
Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These six states possess
73 electoral votes -- 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into
effect.
See
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
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