States join forces against electoral college

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-college05jun05,0,3651999.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials
From the Los Angeles Times
EDITORIAL
States join forces against electoral college
A piecemeal approach may be the only way to kill the anachronistic institution.

June 5, 2006

A PROPOSED EXPERIMENT with majority rule has generated plenty of naysayers who apparently think that some nations are simply too immature to let people directly choose their own leaders. But we say the United States is ready for real democracy.

The experiment is the National Popular Vote campaign, which intends to undermine the Constitution's anachronistic Electoral College. If the campaign succeeds, future presidents will take office only if they win the popular vote nationwide.

The ingenious scheme was developed by John R. Koza, a Stanford professor who also invented the scratch-off lottery ticket. It calls on state legislatures to pass a measure dictating that all the electoral votes from that state go to the winner of the national popular vote. It goes into effect only if enough states approve it to represent a majority of the electoral votes. In other words, if states that represent at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes all approve the measure, the winner of the popular vote nationwide would automatically win the presidency. It thus renders the Electoral College moot without eliminating it.

This kind of end run is necessary because the only way to get rid of the Electoral College entirely is via a constitutional amendment, which would be nearly impossible to pass. Enough small states benefit from the current system to block an amendment. The beauty of this approach is that each state is constitutionally allowed to allot its electoral votes as it sees fit. The measure was approved by California's Assembly on Tuesday and is pending in four other states; backers hope to get it before all 50 states by January.

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But not if we don't do something about digital vote tampering. Until we address that issue, it is just sticking one more finger in a dike of a billion leaks. (No lesbian pun intended - bad trolls!)

Snaggletooth the Crone

I'm willing to try it, if just for the novelty of having a vote counted.