Electoral College

I read about this a few months ago, but had no idea that the bill was sitting on Ahnold's desk. A Stanford University professor has devised a way around the electoral college with out needing the 2/3 vote to ratify the constitution. Basically if enough states (an electoral college majority) create state laws that their electoral college votes will all be awarded to the winner of the popular vote in the presidential election, it will guarentee that the winner of the popular vote wins the election. It will take 11+ of the most populus states for this plan to work, but it behooves the larger states to pass laws like this in order to weild more power on the national landscape. Our last two presidential elections were basically decided by Floridians (with the aid of the Supreme Court) and Ohioans. the most populus states all tend to be blue, with the exceptions of Texas and Florida, so this idea will require bipartisan support. But it would transform our Republic (or is it a Federation) into a more of a true Representitive Democracy. Everyone's vote would actually be equal under a true Representitive Democracy.

The first fruit of his effort, a bill approved by the California legislature that would allocate the state’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, sits on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. The governor has to decide by Sept. 30 whether to sign it, a decision that may well determine whether Dr. Koza’s scheme takes flight or becomes another relic in the history of efforts to kill the Electoral College.

“It would be a major development if California enacts this thing,” said Tim Storey, an analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “It will definitely transform it from a smoldering thing into a fire.’’

There have been many efforts over the decades to kill the Electoral College, the little-known and widely misunderstood body that actually elects the president based on the individual states that a candidate wins. Most recently, former Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois and former Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana spearheaded a drive, Fair Vote, for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.