Democracy: What A Concept / Campaign for a National Popular Vote

Democracy: What A Concept
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted March 22, 2006.

Finally, there's a dandy way to abolish the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote.

(excerpt)

There is a new move promoted by the Campaign for a National Popular Vote to end-run all the problems normally associated with abolishing the Electoral College. This is a state-by-state effort to instruct each state's electors to vote for whichever candidate gets the most popular votes nationwide. Look at 2004: A switch of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have thrown the entire election to John Kerry, despite the fact that George Bush was 3 million votes ahead nationwide.

National Popular Vote has a dandy new approach. Instead of trying to amend the Constitution through a long, difficult process that can and will be stalled by small sates, the campaign proposes a simpler, elegant solution. According to the Constitution, each state legislature can instruct its own electors to cast their votes however the state decides, usually as winner-take-all for whichever candidate carries the state. But there is no reason a state legislature cannot instruct its electors to vote for whomever wins the popular vote.

Democracy! What a concept! The states can do this one-by-one, subscribing to an interstate compact that would take effect when enough states join to elect the actual winner -- a majority of the 538 electoral votes.

Wouldn't it be fun? Candidates campaigning everywhere -- everyone's vote wanted? Democrats in Texas, Republicans in New York, all sought after, cared about as though we actually matter. Yes, this would make campaigns harder on candidates and probably more expensive, as well. And that in turn makes public campaign financing all the more likely. Yea!

Continued @ http://www.alternet.org/story/33852/