Posted on 08/22/2006 8:16:28 PM PDT by calcowgirl
SACRAMENTO - California would cast its 55 Electoral College votes for the winner of the national popular vote under a bill designed to change the way the president is elected and increase the state's influence in national elections.
The bill, approved Tuesday by the Senate, would help draw candidates to the nation's most populous state for intensive campaigning, said Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, who carried the bill in the Senate.
California is a crucial stopover on presidential candidates' fundraising tours but often is otherwise ignored because it is considered to be safely Democratic.
The bill's supporters want candidates to pay more attention to California, rather than devoting most of their energies to a handful of swing states.
"More than a third of the country never sees ... many campaign visits from candidates," Bowen said.
The bill, which goes back to the Assembly for a final vote, would make California part of an interstate compact. The multistate agreement is part of a national campaign started in February by National Popular Vote, a nonprofit based in the Silicon Valley city of Los Altos that seeks to change the way the nation picks a president.
"The founding fathers didn't get everything right," Bowen said, calling the Electoral College "a dinosaur."
Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, called the proposal "brazenly unconstitutional."
He and Republican state Senators Dennis Hollingsworth of La Mesa and Jeff Denham of Merced said the founding fathers settled on compromise that does not include a direct popular vote for president. They said the effort to tie electoral votes to the popular vote violates that portion of the Constitution.
"We don't have a democracy; we have a constitutional republic," Hollingsworth said.
If it eventually becomes law, the legislation would take effect only if states with a combined 270 electoral votes - the number now required to win the presidency - also agreed to decide the election by popular vote. Similar legislation is pending in Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana and Missouri.
California currently awards its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state popular vote, as do most other states. While a plurality of the state's voters are registered as Democrats, giving all California's electoral votes to the popular winner could swing the state to a Republican.
The movement is a reaction to the 2000 presidential contest, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency to George W. Bush, who won more Electoral College votes. Gore also won California that year.
In 2004, major presidential or vice presidential candidates visited California just twice in the campaign's last month, even though the state's voters cast more than 10 percent of the nation's votes for president, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.
Bowen, who is running for secretary of state, said voters in California and other afterthought states have less interest in elections than those in key states such as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.
The bill passed along party lines, 23-14. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill, spokesman Darrel Ng said.
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On the Net:
Read AB2948 at http://www.assembly.ca.gov
"brazenly unconstitutional."
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Of course it is -- it was dreamed up by the libs who hate the idea of any form of vote restriction on the popular count. They would trash the electoral college if they could...and let the big trashed liberal cities determine the demise of American liberties and freedoms.
Besides being unconstitutional
Do the Dems in CA realize that CA would then went to Bush in 2004 ... because he did win the popular vote
I agree. If this is in response to the 00 election, Bush still wins. In 04, Bush wins CA.
This only hurts the Democrats -- taking away their solid Dem advantage -- and won't make it more likely that anyone will campaign there. In a tight race one might want to try to tip the balance towards gaining all of the votes under the currect winner-takes-all system, but if all one could ever do would be to add one or two based on a percentage (i.e. winning 30 to 25 instead of 28 to 27 -- a gain of only 4 electoral votes), why would anyone waste their time campaigning there?
They are probably working on that too.
Beat me by a minute
If they want to be fair, then they should divide the electoral votes along the same boundaries as the popular vote instead of having a "winner take all" system. This "popular vote" scheme is a sham.
The mistake was ever allowing popular vote in the first place. The founding fathers knew that allowing popular vote invited bidding by use of the public funds would corrupt the process as it has. Popular vote also allows those to vote who have no idea of the political consequences to determine leadership as has occurred. The dumb determine the winners and vote for those who give them the most. The democratic party understands this very well.
So, if this loony proposition pases in enough states for the 270 electoral votes, would that mean that a handful of states could band together and decide on other areas of the constitution to 'ignore'???
How is it unconstitutional? The states can allocate their electoral votes any way they choose. They can award them based on the outcome of a cock-fight if they wish.
Dems grasping for straws .. again! next thing you know they'll legislate that the loser actually gets the votes!
So in 2004 Bush would have won California's 55 electoral votes regardless! Had Kerry barely won Ohio, thanks to California's new law, Bush would still have beaten Kerry, for the presidency only thanks to California's new law!
Let The POLITICAL PANDERING begin in earnest...
D#mn those CA-soakers.
Wouldn't that be a hoot if the rest of the country shifted right and although the lib candidate won California, the ev's went to the conservative? There wouldn't be enough waaaaambulances in the world to handle the result.
You guys are missing the point. This bill would give California more political power. It would encourage more Californians to get out and vote, which could give the national popular vote to the loser (ie a Democrat), even though they could lose the electoral college. If this catches fire in other states, we could move toward a direct election, which would give significantly more power to populous states like CA and NY.
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