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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

National Popular Vote Update

The National Popular Vote movement is a movement in state legislatures to drop out of the Electoral College. Since states determine how they distribute their Electors to the Electoral College, it is possible, as Maryland and New Jersey have done, to apportion all of their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. See my post about Maryland passing this measure last year. In both Maryland and New Jersey, this will not take effect until states representing at least 270 Electoral Votes pass similar measures. It has already been vetoed in Hawaii and California, but is pending in a number of states either in the legislature or on the Governor's desk. It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

I am not a big fan of it, I prefer a proportional electoral college system where if you win 70 of the popular vote in a state, you get 70% (or a rounded percentage) of the Electoral votes in that state. If there are 10 Electors, you get 7 of them. Interestingly enough, Minnesota and Oklahoma have joined the proportional party with Maine and Nebraska. Too bad solid states like New York, California, Georgia and Texas will never pass a proportional rule for the Electors.