Once the left wingers get rid of the electoral college, replace it with a popular vote, and render the heartland vote as irrelevant, then the election will be totally decided by the clustered up major population center dwellers. A president like Nancy Pelosi would not be out of the question.
Without trying, it certainly does. I think James Wilson of PA and Roger Sherman of CN were the only strong proponents of popular election.
I suspect the ulterior motive of the NPV types is violence. Our FL Supreme Court really messed up; it should have refused algore's suit and let the election law proceed.
The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush’s lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore’s nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.
Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state-by-state winner-take-all methods.
The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.
The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system so frequently creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.
We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.
The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.
The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.
No recount would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 56 previous presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.
The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote approach, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a “final determination” prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.
“The downside is on occasion the Electoral College will give the Presidency to the candidate with less of the national popular vote...e.g. the 2000 election.”
This is exactly what it was designed to do, to keep the states with the largest population from deciding the vote.
It protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority.