The EC now certainly does NOT give or promote equality among the states when it comes to electing the president. Have you read ANYTHING I’ve posted?
The National Popular Vote bill preserves the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It changes the way electoral votes are awarded by states in the Electoral College, instead of the current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all system (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states). It assures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The presidential election system we have today is not in the Constitution.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
National Popular Vote is not about winning districts or states. It’s about winning individual votes, wherever they are.
A nationwide presidential campaign, with every vote equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Cleveland and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Ohio and Florida.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every vote is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
Wyoming is among the more than 3/4ths of states that don’t see presidential or vice presidential candidates under the current system.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only the current handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. There is no incentive for them to bother to care about the majority of states where they are hopelessly behind or safely ahead to win. 9 of the original 13 states are considered “fly-over” now, and are IGNORED.
I read it all, just don’t agree with many of your premises.
The EC today does not ignore states. At minimum every state has 3 EC votes. Given the close elections recently it can only take one state to swing an election.
Just use an EC map and plot the 2012 campaign. One can easily pick blue vs. red states and award them and come up with a tie or so close a state like Wyoming or New Mexico is enough to win. Once campaigns feel they have a state locked down they look for places they can get a shot at putting them over the top.
Your constant cut and paste of nonsensical items like, “It assures that every vote is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.” means nothing.
This paragraph basically says that once all the popular votes are counted for every state the winner is the one with the most. As I wrote previously that means just getting 50% plus 1 of the 125-140 million votes cast in a presidential election (2004 was close to 130 million), so who cares about individual states?
Would a candidate bother to campaign in Wyoming now? Of course not. Maybe a TV and/or radio commercials. But no visits. Waste of money when a 1% increase in turnout in Chicago pads your national total more.
And since you are arguing for a national popular vote to pick the president then why waste time preserving the EC? To what purpose?
You seem conflicted in your descriptions. If we keep the EC are we not still voting for electors and not the president? If not, then it is as I’ve described - a race to just get the majority.
And, of course, we both agreed to the greater prospect under this system of having a run off. I also predict massive court battles would pursue.
I’d rather contested EC elections go to the House as the constitution lays out.