I didn’t say the EC ignores states. CANDIDATES ignore states.
I did not agree to the inevitability of a run off with National Popular Vote. The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the MOST popular votes in all 50 states (and DC), period.
Under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate.
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally 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 the current handful of swing states. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country.
With the current system, Candidates spend more than two-thirds of their time and money in just six closely divided battleground states; 80% in just nine states; and 99% in just 16 states. That’s precisely what they should do in order to get elected with the current system, because the voters of more than two-thirds of the states simply don’t matter. Candidates have no reason to poll, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the concerns of voters in states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Over 85 million voters, 200 million Americans, are ignored.
With National Popular Vote, every vote would be equal and matter to the candidate for whom it was cast. No one guarantees visits by candidates. But candidates would reallocate the money they raise to no longer ignore 2/3rds of the states and voters.
Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling 18 battleground states.”
Now, policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states - that include 9 of the original 13 states - are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing, too.
Excuse me. In a state that participates in the NPV and that votes [in the majority] for the LOSING candidate [of the national popular vote] – the majority’s votes ARE EFFECTIVELY CHANGED FROM THE CANDIDATE THEY VOTED FOR AND THEN COUNTED ONLY FOR THE CANDIDATE THEY DID NOT VOTE FOR. So, I guess THEY DON’T MATTER TO THEIR CANDIDATE EITHER …
With National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere would be counted equally for, and directly assist, the candidate for whom it was cast.
BULLSHIT. Every vote within a state [participating in the NPV] would count equally, as long as the winner of THAT state ALSO won the NPV. Whereas states [that participate in the NPV] where the LOSER of the NPV wins a majority of votes EFFECTIVELY CHANGE the majority’s vote to the winner of the NPV.
In Bush v. Gore [2000], the Court correctly decided 7-2 that the Florida recount violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It observed:
“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution. Id., at 28—33.”
HOWEVER, it further observed:
“History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors. See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.).”
Furthermore, it observed:
”The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”). It must be remembered that “the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964).”
In Reynolds v. Sims, the issue was legislative districting, but the concepts cite are germaine to Presidential elections. The Court noted:
"Undeniably, the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal, elections. A consistent line of decisions by this Court in cases involving attempts to deny or restrict the right of suffrage has made this indelibly clear. It has been repeatedly recognized that all qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right to vote, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, and to have their votes counted, United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383. In Mosley, the Court stated that it is "as equally unquestionable that the right to have one's vote counted is as open to protection . . . as the right to put a ballot in a box." 238 U.S. [p555] at 386. The right to vote can neither be denied outright, Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347, Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, nor destroyed by alteration of ballots, see United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 315, nor diluted by ballot box stuffing, Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, United States v. Saylor, 322 U.S. 385. As the Court stated in Classic,
Obviously included within the right to choose, secured by the Constitution, is the right of qualified voters within a state to cast their ballots and have them counted. . . .
And that:
"The idea that every voter is equal to every other voter in his State, when he casts his ballot in favor of one of several competing candidates, underlies many of our decisions."
And that:
"No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right. [n38]"
And that:
"We do not believe that the Framers of the Constitution intended to permit the same vote-diluting discrimination to be accomplished through the device of districts containing widely varied numbers of inhabitants. To say that a vote is worth [p564] more in one district than in another would . . . run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government. . . . [n41]"
And that:
"When a State exercises power wholly within the domain of state interest, it is insulated from federal judicial review. But such insulation is not carried over when state power is used as an instrument for circumventing a federally protected right. [n42] [p567] To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen. The fact that an individual lives here or there is not a legitimate reason for overweighting or diluting the efficacy of his vote. The complexions of societies and civilizations change, often with amazing rapidity. A nation once primarily rural in character becomes predominantly urban. [n43] Representation schemes once fair and equitable become archaic and outdated. But the basic principle of representative government remains, and must remain, unchanged -- the weight of a citizen's vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives. Population is, of necessity, the starting point for consideration and the controlling criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies. [n44] [p568] A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more nor no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. This is an essential part of the concept of a government of laws, and not men. This is at the heart of Lincoln's vision of "government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people." The Equal Protection Clause demands no less than substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens, of all places as well as of all races."
FINALLY, an oft-overlooked paragraph from the Constitution [14th Amendment, Paragraph II]:
" ... But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."
The NPV VIOLATES these concepts by allowing a state to value citizens' votes OUTSIDE of its boundaries OVER the votes cast WITHIN it's boundaries - if the majority of the state's voters backed the LOSER of the NPV ...