A recently-introduced ballot measure asks just that, coming on the heels of the second presidential election since 2000 where the candidate with the most votes lost in the Electoral College, which is mostly a winner-take-all system based on statewide popular vote.

But there’s one catch: California passed legislation in 2011 joining a national effort to scrap the current system in favor of the national popular vote, which CalWatchdog wrote about in February. 

Besides being largely redundant, the ballot measure would be merely advisory, with no force of law (the measure only asks if policy makers should do something; it doesn’t direct them to do anything). It’s similar in effect to Prop. 59 from the November ballot, which focused on campaign finance law. 

“My focus is less on exact means than on the goal,” said the measure’s proponent, Rod Howard, an attorney who specializes in mergers and acquisitions. “The interstate NPV compact is one approach, and an ingenious one. But it’s only one approach, and it does not yet have the force of law.”

Ten states and the District of Columbia have signed onto the interstate compact, totaling 165 electoral votes. The effort needs 105 more electoral votes to go into effect, theoretically. 

Other options

There are other options besides the interstate compact, although they are much more elusive. The states could amend the Constitution or call for a Constitutional Convention. But neither option is realistic, due to the two-thirds threshold of support, particularly following an election where the majority of states picked Republican Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote.

The state could pursue litigation, the measure argues, as well as a proportionate system, like those used in Maine and Nebraska, where electoral votes are allocated based on both the popular vote and success in congressional districts, instead of the winner-take-all system. 

Howard’s belief though is that more could and should be done to throw away the current system. The timing may be not be ideal though, as efforts to move to a national popular vote could be panned as partisan and reactionary against Trump (although that may fade by 2018). 

Public opinion

And Americans are souring on the idea. A Gallup poll taken in December showed 47 percent of Americans want to keep the Electoral College. And while that’s just shy of a majority, support has increased substantially since 2011, when only 35 percent said they supported the centuries-old institution. 

Language

Here’s the measure’s language in its entirety: 

“Shall California’s elected officials use all of their federal and state constitutional and legal authority to cause the President and Vice President of the United States to be elected in a manner that follows (and, until then, more closely and more consistently follows) the outcome of the national popular vote for those offices, including, but not limited to, their authority to propose and ratify one or more amendments to the United States Constitution to eliminate or modify the Electoral College process, their authority to approve and adopt interstate compacts such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and their authority to propose, adopt and pursue related legislation and litigation?”

Denise Cross / flickr

Though it means nothing for 2016, the 2020 presidential election may be decided by popular vote — or at least that’s the timeline given by one of the main proponents.

As it stands now, there really is no national election for president, rather 51 elections (including Washington, D.C.), where electors are doled out by the states/D.C., with the winner needing at least 270 electoral votes.

But most states are a foregone conclusion. Would blue California really go for a Republican? Or would red Mississippi chose a Democrat?

In most instance, no chance, so that gives a disproportionate share of attention by presidential candidates to a relatively small group of states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

National Popular Vote is pushing to replace the current race to 270 with a simple majority of the popular vote. Bay Area campaign and election lawyer Barry Fadem, who is working with NPV, says this goal can be achieved by 2020.

How Close Are They, Really?

It may seem like a farfetched idea, but the movement is halfway there. Ten states, including California, have ratified the measure (D.C. has signed on as well). Once enough states have ratified the interstate compact to represent 270 electoral votes — a majority — the county will move to the popular vote.

Last week, the Arizona House of Representatives approved the measure. And although it hasn’t voted yet, two-thirds of the Arizona Senate are sponsors. And there are several other states where at least one chamber has approved.

The way the law is structured, the (Constiutionally-mandated) electors of the states that have ratified the compact would choose the candidate who won the popular vote. Therefore, states that didn’t sign on are free to not participate, but they wouldn’t have enough electoral votes to matter.

The theory is that these states would ultimately fall in line, as they’d then have no incentive to stay under the current system once a majority starts with the popular vote.

Why Go Through This Trouble?

Many voters are still upset that in 2000, Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore for president by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. While this is largely Democrats who are upset, supporters of the losing candidate would be sour in any similar situation.

“The disadvantages of the current system, of course, are first that you can have an election where the winner of the popular vote loses the election,” said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It happened in 2000, without many repercussions, but the next time? Watch out.”

Swing states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia have a disproportionate influence on the general election. There are 12 or so states where candidates spend most of their time because the rest are viewed as forgone conclusions. According to NPV, no campaign events were held by the 2012 presidential candidates outside of these 12 states during the general election.

“Two-thirds of the states now are irrelevant, since they are firmly blue or red, giving all the focus to a small number of competitive ones and distorting the election,” Ornstein.

Downsides

Critics have said that a close election could result in a national recount (“take Florida in 2000 and multiply by 50, with a hundred times the number of lawyers,” said Ornstein), but that the federal government really isn’t equipped to handle a recount of that magnitude.

“The federal government does not conduct elections,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a non-partisan political publication from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “So if there was an election that was so close a recount was required, it would have to be a 50-state recount. That sounds challenging.”

There’s also a concern that attention would shift from swing states to heavily-populated areas, like Los Angeles or New York City, on the theory that time-strapped candidates would plan visits to the densest areas to reach the most people at once.

But NPV contends that the densest cities still only make up a small part of the population. According to Census data, the 30 most heavily-populated cites account for only about 12 percent of the population — nowhere near a majority.

Is It Even Constitutional?

While something that fundamentally changes how the president is elected will likely be challenged in court, Fadem says “a Constitutional amendment is not required,” pointing to language in the Constitution giving each state the right to decide how to direct its electors.

An initiative seeking to get on California’s November ballot likely would add 20 or more Electoral College votes to the Republican candidate’s tally in the 2016 presidential election. That’s more Electoral College votes than the battleground state of Ohio by itself — or the battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire combined.

But California Republican Party officials are neutral on the initiative, saying it needs to be presented to its Initiative Committee before they can consider it. State GOP Chairman Jim Brulte has actually supported a competing national electoral reform effort that passed the California Legislature in 2011, despite Republican opposition, and was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Sound of crickets

“It sort of explains the crickets I hear when I try and talk about it there with the Republican Party,” said Doug Nickle, president of Make California Count, in reference to Brulte. “But I don’t know if he’s representative of the whole Republican Party.”

The Make Our Vote Count Act would apportion California’s Electoral College votes based on the percentage of popular votes the presidential candidates receive in California.

Currently California, like 47 other states, is winner take all. It has given all 55 of its Electoral College votes – 20 percent of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency – to the Democratic candidate in the last six presidential elections.

In the last two presidential elections, Republican candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain each received 37 percent of California’s popular vote. As a result,  each would have received 20 of California’s 55 Electoral College votes had the Make Our Vote Count Act been in effect. President Obama’s electoral vote tally would have dropped to 35 from 55.

In the last five presidential elections, the Republican candidates have received an average of 39.4 percent of California’s popular vote, equating to 22 Electoral College votes on average.

Extra 20-22 electoral votes for Republican

That would not have changed the outcome of any of those elections. But providing the Republican candidate with an extra 20-22 Electoral College votes in a close 2016 election could put him or her over the top.

Nickle discussed his initiative on March 23 with KNEWS talk show host Elise Richmond and her husband, Bob, on her Conservatively Speaking show.

“Quite frankly, right now there’s not a great deal of difference between establishment Democrats or establishment Republicans,” said Nickle. “The fact that they are establishment means that they tend to like the status quo. And that they have these backroom agreements about picking their own winners and losers to preserve their own little fiefdoms. The losers are ultimately we the voters.

“We want to reform the Electoral College to promote fairness, empower and enfranchise all the voters, increase turnout and essentially represent the will of we the people. Because for so long we have accepted that we are not even doing an exercise in democracy when we go to the ballot box. In the last election, 40 percent of the electorate didn’t even have its voice represented. That’s equivalent to not even showing up. The reality right now is that you can ‘call’ California. And that’s not democracy.”

Brulte ‘not hot’ on initiative

Bob Richmond asked Nickle about Brulte’s response to the initiative.

“I kind of assumed, unfortunately perhaps naively, that he would understand that this is something that is a powerful effort for Republicans, but certainly the voters in general,” said Nickle. “I won’t speak for him. I can only tell you that he wasn’t particularly hot on the idea. And it took me a long time to figure out that he has to stay neutral on the issue. And I didn’t understand what he meant by being neutral. Because as a party leader it seems like neutrality is probably the last thing that would be the hallmark. …”

Elise Richmond interjected with a laugh, “You’d think, wouldn’t ya?”

“I would think,” responded Nickle. “But again, I’m not a party guy, so I don’t know how that works.”

Must go to GOP committee first

California Republican Party Communications Director Mark Standriff said in a phone interview, “We don’t have a position on the initiative because I don’t believe it’s ever come up. For the party to have a position on it, it has to go through the initiative committee. During the last couple of years nothing has made it through committee. So there’s no official position on it whatsoever. The party remains neutral on it.

“Typically, these kind of things when they start gathering signatures will make a formal request to our initiative committee. They haven’t even asked to take the matter up. They can either recommend to support it, oppose it, or take no position. Then it goes to the general session during our convention. The next one wouldn’t be until September in Los Angeles. It would be premature for any of us to say whether or not the majority of our delegates would vote to support or oppose.”

Bob Richmond criticized Brulte for writing the forward to a book put out by a competing electoral reform movement, the National Popular Vote bill. Its aim is to give all of California’s Electoral College votes (along with those in a consortium of states totaling at least 270 Electoral College votes) to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the entire United States.

“That’s one of the bad things, that we have a chairman of the California Republic Party who is a paid lobbyist for National Popular Vote,” said Richmond. “And because of that he is excluding this petition from the rest of the state, and pretty much delaying it, boycotting and saying he has to stay neutral. When he should be the one who is leading the charge for this petition. But because of his acceptance of money, he can’t do that.”

Standriff responded that Richmond is incorrect about Brulte being a lobbyist for National Popular Vote. “I don’t believe he’s ever been a lobbyist ever,” he said.

Brulte backs competing reform effort

Brulte’s forward to the book, and the National Popular Vote website, make similar arguments to those made by Nickle: that they want to put California in play in the national election, rather than simply being a glorified ATM machine for advertising dollars that are mostly spent in battleground states.

“California voters recently joined other states in stripping the state legislature of its power to draw legislative and congressional districts and allowing a citizen’s commission to redraw these lines,” wrote Brulte. “Voters did this in part because they knew that with politicians creating safe legislative seats, competition would be diminished, and as a result politicians of both major parties could ignore their communities with impunity.

“Unfortunately, our nation’s Electoral College provides on the national level what many citizens are trying to eliminate on our state level. Most states in the union are not in play in presidential elections. … For example, in 2008, after both parties chose their presidential candidates, all 300 of the campaign events with major-party nominees took place in just 19 states. And from September 24, two days before the first general election debate until election day, 99.74% of all advertising took place in just 18 states. While this might be great for the states involved, the rest of the nation suffers as candidates of both major political parties ignore them during the general election.

“The National Popular Vote provides the necessary incentives to encourage presidential candidates of both major parties to campaign in every state in the union. This is better than the current approach for electing the President. It is better for the candidates, it is better for the citizens of the individual states, and it is better for the nation as a whole.”

Democrats and Brulte agree

Similar arguments were made by Democratic legislators in support of AB 459, authored by then-Assemblyman (and current state Sen.) Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo. Republicans were mostly opposed, although the only one to speak against it was then-state Sen. (and current U.S. Rep.) Doug La Malfa.

“I believe this is going to be a magnet for voter fraud in California and the U.S.,” said La Malfa on the Senate floor July 14, 2011. “I think this is dangerous. It flies in the face of 220 years of election law in the United States for deciding a president. There’s really nothing to be gained for California. California will still be a blue state. To think that we’re going to see more [campaign] resources and effort in California, which will still just be an ATM state for presidential candidates, I think is a misguided way of thinking.”

Nickle also argued against it in his radio interview.

“ ‘National popular vote’ sounds really nice and democratic, right? One man, one vote,” he said. “But it’s really not. It’s in fact far more exclusionary. And it’s essentially what we have with winner take all in California. Here in California, you could have 50.1 percent of the population vote and 100 percent of the Electoral College vote go to that candidate. That’s actually what the national popular vote folks are asking for. So in reality they are excluding 49.9 percent of the population potentially.

“Where that becomes even more dicey, a national popular vote would turn battleground states into battleground cities. It would go to the major metropolitan areas that have the highest concentration of wealth. And pretty soon you have cities buying elections. Where their vote breaks down is the fact that whereas we want an inclusive democracy that allows for a third-party candidate, if you start adding in a third or fourth candidate under the national popular vote, you start diluting the percentage that it would take. And you could very easily start whittling down the election for our president to thresholds below 25 percent of the actual voters.

“That can’t happen under proportional allocation, but it sure could under popular vote. I have a healthy bias for my issue. But the reality is that what they are promoting is actually not democratic.”

State stays winner-take-all for now

Although Hill’s national popular vote bill was passed by the state Legislature, California will remain a winner-take-all state until enough other states join the national popular vote pact to put the total over 270 Electoral College votes. It’s currently halfway there with nine states and the District of Columbia totaling 136 Electoral College votes signed on.

California’s participation in that pact likely would be overridden if the Make Our Vote Count initiative reaches the ballot and is approved by voters. Nickle’s organization is seeking donations to gather about 830,000 signatures by the end of this month to ensure that at least 505,000 are valid.

“We need all the help we can get,” said Nickle. “The world is run by the people who show up.”

Creating over-reaching solutions for non-existent problems is what California legislators are good at. A textbook example of this is a bill awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature which would change the state’s Electoral College process.

AB 459 passed in the Legislature in July without any Republican votes. It would provide a boost to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact  movement.

NPV has been pushing states since 2000 to replace the Electoral College system. That was the year of the controversial victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote nationally. But he lost the vote in the electoral college because, after a recount in Florida, Bush won that state’s electoral votes — and more electoral votes nationally.

NPV awards a state’s electoral votes to the national winner of the popular vote, regardless of which candidate won in that state. Thus, John Doe might lose in California by 1 million votes. But if he won nationally by 1,000 votes, under NPV he would get California’s 55 electoral votes anyway in the Electoral College.

Supporters of AB 459 insist that the change would require candidates to actually campaign in all states, not just in swing states. California especially would be affected because Democrats have won landslides in recent elections here; President Obama won in 2008 by more than 3 million votes. That means candidates of both parties don’t waste time campaigning here except to troll for contributors’ cash.

Junking the Electoral College

Opponents say the real goal is to eventually eliminate the Electoral College altogether. Once Americans are used to thinking of the election more as a vast popular vote, then the National Popular Vote Compact itself would be displaced in favor a constitutional amendment junking the Electoral College entirely in favor of a pure popular vote.

Under NPV,  presidential candidates would look only at the large population areas in the country for votes: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and San Francisco. Rural states, such as Wyoming and North Dakota, would be ignored. The federalist nature of the country, which consists of “free and independent states,” would be fatally compromised.

The U.S. Constitution was written to allow states to have the authority to decide how their electors are selected. Most states use a “winner-take-all” system, where the presidential candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote in the state gets all of its electors.

The 538 members of the Electoral College elect the president. Each state gets one “elector” for every representative it has in Congress. California has 55 electors — the most of any state.

The National Popular Vote bill in California was originally touted to be a bipartisan effort authored by Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande of Palm Desert and Democratic Assemblyman Jerry Hill of San Mateo. Several Republicans had signed on to the cause.  AB 459 was amended several times, adding Democratic legislators as supporters. Eventually the names of Nestande and other Republicans who had signed on were removed.

The bill commits California to a compact in which the state would have to agree to give its Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes nationally. According to the bill’s author, this is because, “California is ignored in the general elections of Presidential campaigns. Candidates do not visit our state, they do not advertise here, poll here, conduct field operations, send mail, or engage in any of the other normal campaign activities. The one exception is that they do fundraise in California ($150 million collected in 2008). However, once the money is collected, it is spent almost completely outside our borders.”

Currently seven states, plus the District of Columbia, have passed the law; they total 77 Electoral College seats. If AB 459 is signed by Brown, the National Popular Vote movement will have achieved 132 electoral votes. NPV wouild go into effect only if enough states pass it that 270 or more electoral votes would be affected by it. The 270 votes would be a majority of the Electoral College.

Constitutional Questions

But many in the state say that no repair is needed because the system is not broken. Critics say that the popular vote scheme raises both practical and constitutional questions.

Proponents say that every vote in every state will matter in every presidential election.

Critics don’t just disagree. They warn that it is a dangerous end run around amending the Constitution. “NPV brings about this change without amending the Constitution, thereby undermining the legitimacy of presidential elections,” according to the CATO Institute. “It also weakens federalism by eliminating the role of the states in presidential contests.”

NPV has been ratified by Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia. Starting with the 2012 presidential election, those states and the District of Columbia collectively will have 74 electoral votes.

Supporting the reform, the League of Women Voters said that many politicians worry there is a perception that it will disenfranchise a significant portion of their own state constituencies. And many governors and state senators have been reluctant to outwardly embrace the change.

More Division?

“The NPV movement is still using the Electoral College to get around the Electoral College,” said Mark Standriff, communications director for the California Republican Party.

“This effort will result in an even more divided America,” California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro recently wrote in an opinion editorial. “The further balkanization of America is a bad idea and one major reason the Electoral College exists.  Our Founders wanted to give Delaware a chance against Virginia.”

Some Republicans support NPV. “Candidates would have to go where the people are,” said former Republican state Sen. Jim Brulte, now a political consultant. “They’d essentially have to campaign everywhere, because they couldn’t afford to neglect areas where a little effort might turn out a larger vote. Under NPV, they would have to spend less money in states like Florida and Ohio and more in California and Texas, because every additional vote they got out would count. As it stands now, an additional vote, or 100,000 votes, in those states doesn’t matter much at all.”

But that isn’t the view of most Republicans. “Our constitution has numerous checks on raw democracy, or majority tyranny, and the Electoral College is an important one,” said John Eastman, former dean of the Chapman University School of Law in a recent analysis for the California Republican Party. Eastman said that the the legal analysis is “surprisingly weak” surrounding the issues of the National Popular Vote movement.

Brown is expected to sign AB 459.

Read CalWatchdog’s May story, “California Could Kill Electoral College“

By KATY GRIMES

Democrats are pushing a bill that, opponents say, could devastate the Republican Party in California. Yet several Republicans have signed on to the cause.

The stated intent of the bill, AB 459, is to give California more impact in presidential campaigns. California is the country’s most populous state. Yet it was was largely ignored in the last two presidential elections because, for two decades, Democrats easily have won presidential elections here.

President Obama won California by more than 3 million votes over John McCain. With Democratic victories guaranteed, there’s no point in campaigning here for votes, although candidates still come here to grab contributions for their campaigns.

Under the U.S. Constitution, “electors” are chosen from each state according to the sum of its members of the U.S. House of Representatives and two senators. Thus, California currently has 55 electoral votes, while small Wyoming has three.

The Constitution stipulates that each state Legislature decides the method by which the electors are chosen. Most states, including California, currently stipulate that whichever presidential candidate wins the most votes in that state gets all that state’s electoral votes.

AB 459 is part the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” The compact has two parts. First, it would go into effect only if it is enacted by enough states that, combined, their electoral votes equal 270 or more (which is more than half the total of 538 electoral votes).

Second, in those states that have passed National Popular Vote, whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote would win all the electoral votes in all the states that are part of the National Popular Vote compact.

According to Wikipedia, “As of April 2011, this interstate compact has been joined by Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia; their 77 electoral votes amount to 28.5% of the 270 needed for the compact to take effect.” Those states and D.C. all lean Democratic. So far, no Republican-leaning state has passed the reform.

If California joined the compact, the number of electoral votes in the compact would rise from 77 to 132.

The National Popular Vote website says that 2,110 state legislators from across the country have endorsed the change.

AB 459 was authored by Democratic Assemblyman Jerry Hill (San Mateo) with the support of Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande (Palm Desert) and Republican Senators Tony Strickland (Thousand Oaks) and Mimi Walters (Laguna Miguel).

California Bill

Supporters of AB 459 insist that changing the Electoral College to a popular vote would require candidates to actually campaign in all states, and not just in swing states.

But opponents say that those backing National Popular Vote have a bigger agenda in mind: Eventually eliminating the Electoral College altogether. Once Americans are used to thinking of the election more as a vast popular vote, then the National Popular Vote Compact itself would be displaced in favor a constitutional amendment junking the Electoral College.

If that happened then, even more than under the National Popular Vote Compact, presidential candidates would look only at the large population areas in the country for votes: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and San Francisco. Rural states, such as Wyoming and North Dakota, would be ignored. The federalist nature of the country, which consists of “free and independent states,” would be fatally compromised.

Republican Opposition

Nationally, most conservatives and Republican Party leaders are adamantly opposed to the popular vote reform. But this is not a new issue. Talk of amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote has been going on for years because liberals believe that they can turn out more voters in vote-rich big cities.

But Republicans and conservatives have respected states’ rights, and support maintaining electing presidents in the way crafted by the Founding Fathers.

California’s GOP National Committeeman Shawn Steel describes the National Popular Vote as “a liberal attempt to end-run the Constitution.”

California State GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro has also been outspoken in opposition to the change, and recently explained, “With Los Angeles County as large as 42 states in terms of population, Democrats would simply have to pour money and workers in there to drive up their popular vote.  When they do the same in New York or Chicago or San Francisco, and this ‘compact’ of the states on electoral votes is law, you could easily have a Democratic ‘lock’ on the presidency.”

The Al Gore Factor

The National Popular Vote campaign is the creation of a San Francisco-based Democrat, John Koza, a supporter of Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential race. That was the last race in which one candidate, Gore, won the overall U.S. popular vote, yet lost the race because his opponent, George W. Bush, won in the electoral college.

Previous attempts to end the Electoral College have been approached on the national scale, involving the cumbersome process of amending the Constitution.

The National Popular Vote reform takes a different tack. By working through the individual states, its move toward a popular vote would probably survive a court challenge, according to constitutional law experts.

The Congressional District Method

Opponents to National Popular Vote say that a much better idea would be what’s called the Congressional District Method. Under it, instead of the current “winner takes all” method, electoral votes are divvied up on the basis of how each individual state votes. Each presidential candidate gets a fraction of the vote, depending on how well he does in that state. It’s also called the Maine-Nebraska Method, because those are the only two states that currently use this method.

Under this method for California, if the Democrat won 57 percent of the state’s votes, he would get 57 percent of the California electoral votes — 31 electoral votes. And if the Republican got 43 percent of the electoral votes, he would get 43 percent of the California electoral votes — 24 electoral votes.

That would give Presidential candidates a strong incentive to actively campaign in this state and consider our interests. But Democrats aren’t keen on the idea because, as mentioned, they currently have a lock on all 55 electoral votes.

Would Republicans Come Here?

Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue (Linda) and other opponent to the National Popular Vote spoke to me this week refuting the argument that it would cause Republican presidential candidates to campaign and invest in California. “Projections are that they would invest upwards of $30 Million. However, Democrats would be more inclined to invest in Democrat vote-rich California with projected spending exceeding $150 Million,” Logue said.

Other Republicans opposed to the measure are concerned about the organizations and persons supporting the movement: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 
Common Cause, Fair Vote, Secretary of State Debra Bowen and a veritable “Who’s Who” list of the liberal establishment.

Logue said that, while not one strong Republican state has passed National Popular Vote, the organization is targeting some well-respected Republican leaders and former legislators to advance their campaign, and has even hired several to work for the campaign.

“I believe National Popular Vote will devastate Republican prospects in California,” said Logue.

Opponents are concerned that the National Popular Vote movement provides no process for conducting a nationwide recount if the popular vote is close.  The absence of a nationwide recount would generate substantial popular doubt about the legitimacy of the supposed winner.

Ratification

Democrat Presidential candidates would benefit since the Democrat party base is located in large states like California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.   These six states, combined, contain nearly 33 percent of the population of the United States and each state has voted at least five straight times for the Democratic presidential candidate.

AB 459 has been amended twice, and has been ordered to a third reading, after making it through two Assembly committees. Previous attempts to pass a National Popular Vote bill — AB 2948 (Umberg) of 2006, and SB 37 (Migden) of 2008 (identical to AB 459) — were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his veto message to SB 37, he wrote:

As I stated in vetoing similar legislation in 2006, I believe strongly in democracy and in honoring the will of the people. This bill represents a significant departure away from letting each individual state choose how to award its presidential electoral votes and towards a national vote for president. Because California’s endorsement of a national popular vote would significantly change the debate on the matter, enactment of this bill would represent a major shift in the way not only Californians but all Americans choose their president. Such a significant change should be voted on by the people. As such, I cannot support this measure but encourage the proponents to seek approval of the people for the changes it proposes.