Tweet PoliticsPA.com reports that National Popular Vote has launched a new advertising campaign in Pennsylvania. NPV hopes to dampen enthusiasm for a proposal to award Pennsylvania’s electors by congressional district. Simultaneously, it hopes to draw attention to its own plan to award states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. A voice in the ad pretends to be an announcer at a baseball game: “It’s all...
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Tweet Readers of this blog will remember that the National Popular Vote campaign is striving to effectively eliminate the Electoral College by asking states to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the winner of state popular votes. Now, it looks like NPV’s long road to changing the Electoral College might encounter a sudden detour. Some Pennsylvania Republicans have proposed an alternative: a...
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Tweet Pennsylvania Republicans want to change the state’s method of awarding presidential electors: Instead of a winner-take-all system, they propose to award electors based on congressional district. http://bit.ly/qp1z6S One of the great strengths of the current system is the great discretion given to state legislatures in picking a manner of elector allocation. If Pennsylvania legislators deem this method to be in their interest, then they should go for it....
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Tweet A common argument made in favor of NPV (or any national direct election plan) is that it keeps votes from being “wasted.” Editorialists such as this one argue, for example, “Did you know that the 1.2 million votes John McCain received in our state in 2008 did not matter? Those 1.2 million voters might just as well have stayed home because all 11 of Washington’s electoral votes went...
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Tweet Or So National Popular Vote Wants You to Believe By: Tara Ross & Trent England Even as the rest of the country focuses on the economy, the inventor of the scratch-off lottery ticket continues his push to all but eliminate the Electoral College. John Koza’s National Popular Vote effort is making unfortunate progress. Just last week, Governor Jerry Brown’s signature ensured that the elector-rich state of California will...
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Tweet In the last two days, I’ve debated four National Popular Vote advocates in two cities and spoken about the issue as part of a panel presentation on federalism. Here are a few things I noted from the debates. NPV advocates–in this case, Tom Golisano–continue to make the claim that the election outcomes in 1876 and 1888 were “debacles” because the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College and...
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Tweet Following four failures in Rhode Island and two in New York, National Popular Vote may have sealed up a California victory with recent legislative approval of their interstate compact legislation. (For a description, see “What is ‘National Popular Vote’?“) Dr. John Koza and Tom Golisano (the campaign’s founder and their new billionaire supporter, respectively) have shifted focus to Virginia their attempt to gain the 270 electoral votes needed...
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Tweet This morning the California Senate passed AB 459 (the Electoral College Compact Bill) 23-15 in third reading, sending it back to the Assembly and then on to Governor Brown. The margin was narrower than many expected. NPV founder and scratch ticket inventor John Koza has spent millions lobbying for the measure across the country. In California, he hired former Republican Sen. Ray Haynes (who opposed NPV while in...
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Tweet The NPV (a state-by-state campaign to abolish the Electoral College) has amassed 77 electoral votes by state legislatures passing bills committing their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. For more back story, click here. What’s surprising is the amount of time, energy and money they’ve spent in one tiny state: Rhode Island. NPV was the top lobby in the state this year, looking to spend almost a quarter...
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