...brought about by its betrayal of the wishes of the voters....

The electoral college. You'd see presidential candidates in Texas, California and New York, and that's basically it. Maybe throw in an odd visit to Atlanta or Boston. Maybe Pennsylvania.

I can't imagine Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa or any other states letting this get anywhere.

Texas (despite the supposed inroads) is still safely red, while CA and NY trend blue. There's almost no reason to go there now.

We are moving away from in-person campaigning, to media driven. Very few people undecided or independent show up to campaign stops by candidates. The bulk of the large crowd for Obama, Bernie, Trump, etc have largely made up their minds.

would control the election. Do you think the smaller states would support that in any form or fashion?

The electoral college may be a flawed system, but from the smaller states perspective, it gives them a lot more power than they would otherwise have, and they can prevent any changes by declining to consider changes.

Among the 13 lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in 9 state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 4 jurisdictions.

Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group

Now political clout comes from being among the handful of battleground states. 80% of states and voters are ignored by presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.

State winner-take-all laws negate any simplistic mathematical equations about the relative power of states based on their number of residents per electoral vote. Small state math means absolutely nothing to presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, or to presidents once in office.

In the 25 smallest states in 2008, the Democratic and Republican popular vote was almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million), as was the electoral vote (57 versus 58).

In 2012, 24 of the nation's 27 smallest states received no attention at all from presidential campaigns after the conventions after Mitt Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee on April 11. They were ignored despite their supposed numerical advantage in the Electoral College. In fact, the 8.6 million eligible voters in Ohio received more campaign ads and campaign visits from the major party campaigns than the 42 million eligible voters in those 27 smallest states combined.

The 12 smallest states are totally ignored in presidential elections. These states are not ignored because they are small, but because they are not closely divided “battleground” states.

Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections.

Similarly, the 25 smallest states have been almost equally noncompetitive. They voted Republican or Democratic 12-13 in 2008 and 2012.

Voters in states that are reliably red or blue don't matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.

With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 23% of the nation's votes!

But the political reality is that the 11 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population, rarely agree on any political question. In terms of recent presidential elections, the 11 largest states have included five "red states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia) and six "blue" states (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey). The fact is that the big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.

In 2004, among the 11 most populous states, in the seven non-battleground states, % of winning party, and margin of “wasted” popular votes, from among the total 122 Million votes cast nationally:
* Texas (62% Republican), 1,691,267
* New York (59% Democratic), 1,192,436
* Georgia (58% Republican), 544,634
* North Carolina (56% Republican), 426,778
* California (55% Democratic), 1,023,560
* Illinois (55% Democratic), 513,342
* New Jersey (53% Democratic), 211,826

To put these numbers in perspective,
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
Utah (5 electoral votes) generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004.
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).

needs to go. It should be United People of America.

Because of state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes, analysts concluded months ago that only the 2016 party winner of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire (with 86 electoral votes among them) is not a foregone conclusion.

10 states were considered competitive in the 2012 election. More than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested in them.

So, if the National Popular Vote bill is not in effect, less than a handful of states will continue to dominate and determine the presidential general election.

Over the last few decades, presidential election outcomes within the majority of states have become more and more predictable.

From 1992- 2012
13 states (with 102 electoral votes) voted Republican every time
19 states (with 242) voted Democratic every time

If this 20 year pattern continues, and the National Popular Vote bill does not go into effect,
Democrats only would need a mere 28 electoral votes from other states.
If Republicans lose Florida (29), they would lose.

Population shifts have converted states that were once solidly Republican into closely divided “battleground” states.
There do not appear to be any Democratic states making the transition to voting Republican in presidential races.

Some states have not been competitive for more than a half-century and most states now have a degree of partisan imbalance that makes them highly unlikely to be in a swing state position.
• 41 States Won by Same Party, 2000-2012
• 32 States Won by Same Party, 1992-2012
• 13 States Won Only by Republican Party, 1980-2012
• 19 States Won Only by Democratic Party, 1992-2012
• 7 Democratic States Not Swing State since 1988
• 16 GOP States Not Swing State since 1988

Washington is an easy example. We know it's a blue state because the Puget Sound area, which is blue, has enough people to swing any statewide election. Go east on I-90 and things change - when you get to the middle of the state you're in a teabagger preserve. All our great blue states contain large chunks of red.

OTOH, even the reddest of red states contains Democrats.

Since being introduced in 2006, the National Popular Vote bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 250 electoral votes, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), Oklahoma (7), and Oregon (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by the District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), New Jersey (14), Maryland (11), California (55), Massachusetts (10), New York (29), Vermont (3), Rhode Island (4), and Washington (13). These 11 jurisdictions have 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 41 red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

NationalPopularVote.com

In 2012, more than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested on voters in just the then only ten competitive states.
38 states, including 24 of the 27 smallest states, and Texas, California, Georgia, Massachusetts, and New York were politically irrelevant and not visited or advertised in after the conventions.
There are only expected to be 7 remaining swing states in 2016.

Issues of importance to non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them.

Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.

A nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population.

The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.

With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to try and do that in Vermont or Wyoming, or for a Republican to try it in Wyoming or Vermont.

I think there should be 51 votes: 50 states plus DC. 51 votes. Each state and DC are all worth one vote. Win 26 states or 25 states and DC? You win. That way it doesn't MATTER how many people live in each state and no state is more important than any other.

I'm beginning to see the wisdom of the founders with regard to the electoral college.

The Electoral College is now the set of 538 dedicated party activists we vote for, who vote as rubberstamps for presidential candidates. In the current presidential election system, 48 states award all of their electors to the winners of their state. This is not what the Founders intended.

The National Popular Vote bill would end the disproportionate attention and influence of the "mob" in the current handful of closely divided battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, while the "mobs" of the vast majority of states are ignored.

In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory.

Analysts already conclude that only the 2016 party winner of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire (with 86 electoral votes among them) is not a foregone conclusion. So, if the National Popular Vote bill is not in effect, less than a handful of states will continue to dominate and determine the presidential general election.

The electors are and will be dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).

There is no reason to think that the Electoral College would prevent Trump from being elected President of the United States, regardless of whether presidential electors are elected on the basis of the state-by-state winner-take-all rule or the nationwide popular vote

and give their votes to someone else.

We would probably hate a Jeb Bush, for example, but at least he's not on the way to being another Hitler and he's not certifiable.

Under the “winner-take-all” rule used in 48 states, the presidential-elector candidates who receive the most popular votes statewide are elected. All of a state’s electoral votes are won by the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each separate state. In Maine and Nebraska, the candidate for the position of presidential elector who receives the most popular votes in each congressional district is elected (with the two remaining electors being based on the statewide popular vote).

"Faithless electors" have cast votes in the past. It could happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome.

States can enact laws to compel electors to vote as pledged.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).

National Popular Vote endorses the Uniform Faithless Presidential Electors Act. The Act has a state-administered pledge of faithfulness. Any attempt by a presidential elector to cast a vote in violation of that pledge effectively constitutes resignation from the office of elector. The Act provides a mechanism for immediately filling a vacancy created for that reason (or any other reason).

would be unlikely to support that in the face of a Trump candidacy.

Most Americans would be appalled if the candidate with the most popular votes did not win because a party tried to change the rules of the election. We don't allow this in other elections in our representative republic.

An attempt by a governor and legislature to change the “rules of the game” between Election Day in November and the mid-December meeting of the Electoral College would violate the Impairments Clause and be invalid because it would violate existing federal law.

The U.S. Constitution (Article II, section 1, clause 4) grants Congress the power to choose the time for appointing presidential electors:

“The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

Existing federal law (section 1 of title 3 of United States Code) specifies that presidential electors may only be appointed on one specific day in every four-year period, namely the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Your hypothetical alternative candidate would need at least 270 electoral votes from faithless electors.

Under the National Popular Vote compact, the nationwide winning candidate would generally receive an exaggerated margin of the votes in the Electoral College in any given presidential election, because the bill guarantees that the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia would receive at least 270 electoral votes (of 538) from just the states belonging to the compact. Then, in addition to this guaranteed minimum bloc of at least 270 electoral votes, the nationwide winning candidate would generally receive additional electoral votes from whichever non-compacting states he or she happened to carry.

Let's not pretend like this system necessarily favors us.

Two thirds of the state legislatures would need to agree to change the current system.

The system is 61% of the way to being changed by states enacting the National Popular Vote bill.

The U.S. Constitution says "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . ." The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

The normal way of changing the method of electing the President is not a federal constitutional amendment, but changes in state law.

Historically, major changes in the method of electing the President have come about by state legislative action. For example, the people had no vote for President in most states in the nation's first election in 1789. However, now, as a result of changes in the state laws governing the appointment of presidential electors, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states.

In 1789, only 3 states used the winner-take-all method (awarding all of a state's electoral vote to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state). However, as a result of changes in state laws, the winner-take-all method is now currently used by 48 of the 50 states.

In 1789, it was necessary to own a substantial amount of property in order to vote; however, as a result of changes in state laws, there are now no property requirements for voting in any state.

In other words, neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, that the voters may vote and the winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.

The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes. The abnormal process is to go outside the Constitution, and amend it.

The National Popular Vote bill would take effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.

The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

The NPV may be viewed as unconstitutional on two grounds...
1. Collusion. A group of states is not permitted to engage in a compact against other states without permission of Congress.
2. It may appear to be a way to thwart the Constitution without a Constitutional amendment, which violates the constitutional rights of the states not part of the compact.

Another reason may be argued that a state's electoral votes are being based on the votes in other states. This could run into violations of several state constitutions.

In other words....if NPV gets enough states to sign up...expect a legal mess. Ultimately, it's probably a bad idea.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that congressional consent is only necessary for interstate compacts that ‘encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States [U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, 1978].’ Because the choice of method of appointing presidential Electors is an “exclusive” and “plenary” state power, there is no encroachment on federal authority.

Thus, under established compact jurisprudence, congressional consent would not be necessary for the National Popular Vote compact to become effective.

National Popular Vote is not "against other states".

Because each state has independent power to award its electoral votes in the manner it sees fit, it is difficult to see what "adverse effect" might be claimed by one state from the decision of another state to award its electoral votes in a particular way. It is especially unclear what adverse "political" effect might be claimed, given that the National Popular Vote compact would treat votes cast in all 50 states and the District of Columbia equally. A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. The National Popular Vote compact does not confer any advantage on states belonging to the compact as compared to non-compacting states. A vote cast in a compacting state would be, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. The National Popular Vote compact certainly would not reduce the voice of voters in non-compacting states relative to the voice of voters in member states.

It does not violate the constitutional rights of the states not part of the compact.

The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.

“The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The National Popular Vote states aren’t delegating their Electoral College votes to voters outside the state; they have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.”
- Vikram David Amar - professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law. Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the United States.

but rather a fundamental distrust of pure democracy. There was the feeling, articulated by Madison (if I recall correctly from old reading) in his first-hand accounts of the constitutional convention, that popular opinion is often uninformed, easily deceived and swayed, and that there should be some structural barrier to the office beyond popular opinion..

Popular election of the chief executive does not determine whether a government is a pure democracy
Pure democracy is a form of government in which people vote on all policy initiatives directly.
With National Popular Vote, the United States would still be a republic, in which citizens continue to elect the President by a majority of Electoral College votes by states, to represent us and conduct the business of government.

The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes used by 2 states, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by states of winner-take-all or district winner laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

In the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 and second election in 1792, the states employed a wide variety of methods for choosing presidential electors, including
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council,
● appointment by both houses of the state legislature,
● popular election using special single-member presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using counties as presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using congressional districts,
● popular election using multi-member regional districts,
● combinations of popular election and legislative choice,
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council combined with the state legislature, and
● statewide popular election.

State laws now give the people the right to vote for President in all 50 states and DC. There is no reason to think that the electors would ignore state law for awarding their votes, to thereby prevent a candidate who wins the popular vote in their state or in the country from being elected President of the United States, regardless of whether presidential electors are elected on the basis of the state-by-state winner-take-all rule or the nationwide popular vote.

With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 23% of the nation's votes!

The National Popular Vote bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It ensures that every voter 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.

Since they had just joined the Union and deemed it impossible (LOL) to organize a vote, the legislature simply gave their electors to Rutherfraud Hayes.

It would be interesting to see a campaign run in this environment. The population of the US is heavily located on both coasts. Something like 25% of the population exists either between DC and Boston, or LA and San Diego. I care less about where people campaign than upon what issues they campaign. The current system is distorted by the primary system (corn ethanol) but imagine the issues that won't get addressed when the federal election is almost completely dominated by the major population centers, the vast majority on the two coasts. You think Wall Street dominates now....

During the course of campaigns, candidates are educated and campaign about the local, regional, and state issues most important to the handful of battleground states they need to win. They take this knowledge and prioritization with them once they are elected. Candidates need to be educated and care about all of our states.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, in 2012 did not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. 10 of the original 13 states are ignored now. 80% of states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns. Candidates had no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they were safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

80% of the states and people were just spectators to the presidential election. That's more than 85 million voters, more than 200 million Americans.

In 2012, more than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested on voters in just the then only ten competitive states. 38 states were politically irrelevant.There are only expected to be 7 remaining swing states in 2016.

Issues of importance to non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them.

In 2004: “Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out . . . that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling [in the then] 18 battleground states.”
There were only 10 battleground states in 2012.

Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledging the reality that [then] more than 2/3rds of Americans were ignored in the 2008 presidential campaign, said:
“If people don’t like it, they can move from a safe state to a swing state.”

Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.

In a nationwide election for President, candidates would campaign everywhere—big cities, medium-sized cities, and rural areas—in proportion to the number of votes, just as they now do in only the handful of battleground states.

The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.

With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to try and do that in Vermont or Wyoming, or for a Republican to try it in Wyoming or Vermont.

The major population centers already tend to distort politics on a state level, at least in states with significant population centers. States without them tend not to even have enough electoral votes for candidates to particularly care. But once it becomes purely popular, all the attention will tend to be on the dozen or so major population centers. Right now, it's "battleground states". In a popular vote it will become "battle ground population centers" (which will actually tend to mirror the major TV markets I'd bet). Our politics will shift a bit to try to "divide" these populations, but the end result will be a deep concentration on about a dozen or so "markets" which probably will be in fewer than 10 states.

but now Wikipedia does it for me...yay!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

If you go to the column that says "2014 estimated pop. per Congress-ional seat", that gives you the number of voters that are represented by a single electoral vote by state.

The average across the United States is 500,808 people per electoral vote.
In Wyoming, it's 194,718.
In Texas, it's 709,394.

I live in a state that technically benefits from the electoral college as our number is under 500,000 per vote, but I'd trade that advantage to get rid of that most undemocratic of institutions, the Electoral College.

We would be mental to push for it to be abandoned. Further, direct election is not a good idea...I wrote my baccalaureate thesis on it; why every country should abandon it. Basically, there is a minimum margin of error below which it is impossible to ever actually know who won an election...and it's fairly static whether you have 2000 votes or 20000000 votes; it's about 2.23%.

That means every election closer than that...we can never know, even with 100 recounts, who won. Anybody telling you they know for certain the outcome of FL in 2000 for example is full of shit. It's impossible to know on an election that close...we might as well have flipped a coin. There's a few such elections every year...I'd rather exclude the Presidency from that pool.

The recount in Minnsota of the 2008 senate race was a cluster(*). Even though Franken won, it just as easily could have gone the other way. I think we had better lawyers on the Democratic side. (I think it came down to a 312 vote difference.)

Margins of error occur in statistics, not in a vote count. Any amount of more popular votes than an opponent obtained, makes that candidate the winner in an election decided by popular vote.

That's the very nature of the problem. Vote-totals are not the solid things people think they are...every result excludes votes that should have been counted or votes that should have been excluded, votes that disappeared from the count never to be found, acts of malfeasance and votes that are in-dispute and ambiguous. Recounts do some to repair these errors but it's impossible to get them all...even in recounts, votes that should have been tossed get included or miscredited contrary to the will of the voter or votes that were legitimate get tossed. There is a known margin-of-error of the accuracy of vote tabulations.

Below that threshold we don't really know the certainty of the results...it's probably right but it's not certainly right and the closer it gets, the less likely it is that we will get it right. For a vote the size of FL in 2000...the point at which it's as likely we get it right as wrong isn't 1000 votes, it's a few 10,000s of votes. For a national direct election, it would be hundreds-of-thousands or millions of votes.

We will never really know who won Florida in 2000. We will never really know who won that MN Senate race or the previous-to-last Governor's race here in CT. Direct election is just as flawed as the Electoral College. There is no perfect will-of-the-public measuring system, no voting system is ever going to get it right all the time. The one we have is perfectly-fine and conveys a legitimacy (even falsely) into the result that direct elections would remove.

Direct election is not just as flawed as the current Electoral College system. The one we have is not perfectly-fine and does not convey a legitimacy into the result that direct elections would remove.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Every voter is not equal. Every voter does not matter, in every state, in every presidential election. And the candidate with the most votes does not always win, as in virtually every other election in the country.

During the course of campaigns, candidates are educated and campaign about the local, regional, and state issues most important to the handful of battleground states they need to win. They take this knowledge and prioritization with them once they are elected. Candidates need to be educated and care about all of our states.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state, ensures that the candidates, after the conventions, in 2012 did not reach out to about 80% of the states and their voters. 10 of the original 13 states are ignored now. 80% of states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns. Candidates had no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they were safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

80% of the states and people were just spectators to the presidential election. That's more than 85 million voters, more than 200 million Americans.

In 2012, more than 99% of presidential campaign attention (ad spending and visits) was invested on voters in just the then only ten competitive states. 38 states were politically irrelevant.There are only expected to be 7 remaining swing states in 2016.

Issues of importance to non-battleground states are of so little interest to presidential candidates that they don’t even bother to poll them.

Over 87% of both Romney and Obama campaign offices were in just the then 12 swing states. The few campaign offices in the 38 remaining states were for fund-raising, volunteer phone calls, and arranging travel to battleground states.

Since World War II, a shift of a few thousand votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections

Policies important to the citizens of non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

“Battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.

Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.

The majority of the public also believes in intelligent design. I am utterly dismissive of what the public thinks about a great many things they barely comprehend. (Edit: If you needed more evidence of why I'm dismissive of public opinion: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027377229)

You see a problem here that I do not. No voting system is perfect and I believe this one is superior in reality to the direct election system you support. I don't care about where spending is focused or its results on what issues draw focus or inequality of voters.

I care solely about not having decisions to choose the leader of our nation so close that we can never know the true outcome resulting in governments perceived as illegitimate. That to me is the sole issue that must be avoided at all costs. The EC has given us only two such elections in 239 years. (Hayes/Tilden and Bush/Gore) Direct election would have given us 11, changed the outcomes of 4 and likely would have started a second Civil War in one case.

I daresay direct election supporters are possibly the people that scare me most...they want to watch America burn for an idiotic idea of equality at the cost of legitimacy. The history of a large nation using direct election is that of the French Republic. (Which French Republic--they've been through five?! Exactly my point.)

In elections, under the National Popular Vote system, every voter would be equal and politically relevant. The winner and loser(s) would simply be determined by the greatest number of individual votes, like virtually every other election in the United States.

No recount, much less a nationwide recount, would have been warranted in any of the nation’s 57 presidential elections if the outcome had been based on the nationwide count.

The current presidential election system makes a repeat of 2000 more likely. All you need is a thin and contested margin in a single state with enough electoral votes to make a difference. It's much less likely that the national vote will be close enough that voting irregularities in a single area will swing enough net votes to make a difference. If we'd had National Popular Vote in 2000, a recount in Florida would not have been an issue.

The idea that recounts will be likely and messy with National Popular Vote is distracting.

The state-by-state winner-take-all system is not a firewall, but instead causes unnecessary fires.
“It’s an arsonist itching to burn down the whole neighborhood by torching a single house.” Hertzberg

The 2000 presidential election was an artificial crisis created because of Bush's lead of 537 popular votes in Florida. Gore's nationwide lead was 537,179 popular votes (1,000 times larger). Given the miniscule number of votes that are changed by a typical statewide recount (averaging only 274 votes); no one would have requested a recount or disputed the results in 2000 if the national popular vote had controlled the outcome. Indeed, no one (except perhaps almanac writers and trivia buffs) would have cared that one of the candidates happened to have a 537-vote margin in Florida.

Recounts are far more likely in the current system of state by-state winner-take-all methods.

The possibility of recounts should not even be a consideration in debating the merits of a national popular vote. No one has ever suggested that the possibility of a recount constitutes a valid reason why state governors or U.S. Senators, for example, should not be elected by a popular vote.

The question of recounts comes to mind in connection with presidential elections only because the current system creates artificial crises and unnecessary disputes.

We do and would vote state by state. Each state manages its own election and is prepared to conduct a recount.

Given that there is a recount only once in about 160 statewide elections, and given there is a presidential election once every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 640 years with the National Popular Vote. The actual probability of a close national election would be even less than that because recounts are less likely with larger pools of votes.

The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount was a mere 296 votes in a 10-year study of 2,884 elections.

The common nationwide date for meeting of the Electoral College has been set by federal law as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" prior to the meeting of the Electoral College. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the states are expected to make their "final determination" six days before the Electoral College meets.

Current and past presidential candidates with a public record of support for the National Popular Vote bill: Congressman John Anderson (R, I –ILL), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN).

"We live in a time when the American people are increasingly cynical about their government's ability to deal with our most pressing problems," . . . "This means that there is a need for bold, effective presidential leadership as never before. Therefore, we simply can no longer afford to run the risk of having a president who is handicapped by not having won the most popular votes. The National Popular Vote approach offers the states a way to deal with this issue in a way that is totally consistent with our constitutional principles."

- Senator Fred Thompson

Every other state is safely lined up on team blue or team red.

I'm from Texas, so I get to do that.

Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire (with 86 electoral votes among them)