R U on drugz? Man, the 1960's musta been very, very good to you ...
Let us assume that, say 12 states totally 270 electoral votes participate in the NPV. 39 state do not [have to include DC].
Let us further assume that there is an even split of the EVs in an election, 135-135.
Let us further assume that the remaining 268 EVs split 140-128.
That would NORMALLY lead to a 275-263 electoral winner.
HOWEVER, if the candidate [who woulda gotten the 275 EVs] DID NOT win the national popular vote, the EVs of the 38 states that DID NOT participate in the NPV are essentially WORTHLESS.
That is because the 135-135 EV spit would become 270-0, giving the OTHER candidate the victory.
The political power of the majority of states that voted for the NPV loser AND DID NOT participate in the NPV [140 EVs] CERTAINLY is diminished ...
I don’t understand your math.
There are 538 electoral votes in total in the country.
The winner of the national popular vote is guaranteed at least 270 electoral votes from the states that enact the bill. That majority is the minimum needed to elect the President.
Based on the current mix of states that have enacted the National Popular Vote compact, it could take about 25 states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to activate the compact.
Every vote in every state would be included equally in the states’ and national popular vote total.
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.
In that possible scenario, now, the winner(s) in each of the other 39 states and DC would be worthless.
In 1966, the state of Delaware led a group of 12 predominantly low-population states (including North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania) in suing New York in the U.S. Supreme Court.
David P. Buckson (Republican Attorney General of Delaware at the time) led the effort. Delaware’s brief argued:
“The state unit-vote system [the ‘winner-take-all’ rule] debases the national voting rights and political status of Plaintiff’s citizens and those of other small states by discriminating against them in favor of citizens of the larger states. A citizen of a small state is in a position to influence fewer electoral votes than a citizen of a larger state, and therefore his popular vote is less sought after by major candidates. He receives less attention in campaign efforts and in consideration of his interests.”
In their brief, Delaware and the other plaintiffs stated:
“This is an original action by the State of Delaware as parens patriae for its citizens, against the State of New York, all other states, and the District of Columbia under authority of Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution and 28 U.S. Code sec. 1251. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the respective state statutes employing the ‘general ticket’ or ‘state unit-vote’ system, by which the total number of presidential electoral votes of a state is arbitrarily misappropriate for the candidate receiving a bare plurality of the total number of citizens’ votes cast within the state.
“The Complaint alleges that, although the states, pursuant to Article II, Section 1, Par. 2 of the Constitution, have some discretion as to the manner of appointment of presidential electors, they are nevertheless bound by constitutional limitations of due process and equal protections of the laws and by the intention of the Constitution that all states’ electors would have equal weight. Further, general use of the state unit system by the states is a collective unconstitutional abridgment of all citizens’ reserved political rights to associate meaningfully across state lines in national elections.”
The plaintiff’s brief argued that the votes of the citizens of Delaware and the other plaintiff states are
“diluted, debased, and misappropriated through the state unit system.”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case (presumably because of the well-established constitutional provision that the manner of awarding electoral votes is exclusively a state decision).
The importance of the 1966 Delaware case is not that it set any legal precedent. The controlling precedent recognizing the plenary and exclusive power of the states to allocate electoral votes was set in 1893, and did not need reiteration in 1966. The 1966 case is important because Delaware led a group of 12 predominantly low-population states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania) in suing New York in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that New York’s use of the winner-take-all effectively disenfranchised voters in their states. The importance of the 1966 case is political. This lawsuit, by the state governments of 12 states, put these states on record as recognizing the illusory benefit to the small states of the two-vote bonus. The Court declined to hear the case because of the well-established 1893 precedent that the manner of awarding electoral votes is exclusively a state decision. Ironically, defendant New York is no longer a battleground state (as it was in the 1960s) and today suffers the very same disenfranchisement as the 12 non-competitive states who sued New York in 1966. A vote in New York is, today, equal to a vote in any of these small non-competitive states—all are equally worthless and irrelevant in presidential elections.