- March 23, 2006 • 12:03 am PST
- + responses
Newsflash: The Electoral College is outdated.
People have stopped wearing silly white wigs.
There is a brilliant and practical plan to override The Electoral College with a national popular vote. Hendrik Hertzberg outlined this plan several weeks ago in The New Yorker. Did you miss it? Then The New York Times wrote an editorial last week.
Based on the ingenius suggestion of Stanford Professor John Koza, The Campaign for the National Popular Vote proposes that state legislatures, which have complete control over how their electoral votes are distributed, sign a pact to give all their votes to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally. This pact would take effect only when enough states sign the pact to declare a winner (i.e. 270+ electoral votes, or as few as eleven states). The bill, kicking around the Illinois State House, has been endorsed by the 100 Sun-Times newspapers in the Chicago area. If passed, this will introduce a radical concept into our presidential elections: The person with the most votes wins. Hot dog! Blue state voters and red state voters will matter again. Politicians will have to visit every state, not just the swing states. California babies will be kissed.
This sounds to us like a great idea, an idea that needs energy, widespread awareness and support. Now we have a plan to make this happen. Once this gets passed, we will turn our attention to taking the ludicrous sums of $ out of politics. First things first: Let's win the campaign for a popular vote.
