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.
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.