I was wondering when we’d get our first crybaby thread about the EC.
The winning position is that you make it to where the President-elect would have to win both the majority of EV and the plurality of the PV. We can’t get rid of the EC all together because people would only campaign in the large cities. Congressional districts would also be a stupid idea given how the media is dominant over a region. However, in this day and age of being able to tally votes within days if not hours…it makes no sense to ignore the popular vote any longer.
It's crazy because the EC already favors them. They have multiple states that are just empty land, but still get the minimum 3 EV's even though their population doesn't warrant it.
That does not mean that the EC favors them. They may gain ground in that manner but they lose it when ten million voters in CA get counted for the democrat candidate but would vote for the republican one.
The real loss for both sides really is not counted anyway - it is the number of voters that do not participate because their vote is already decided - those voters in CA and WA that are tallied for democrats have many republicans that do not even bother just as there are many democrats that likely don't bother in TX as they are going to be tallied for the republican. I think there would be some surprising changes to the voter map if we actually started counting popular votes rather than using the EC.
A national popular vote could increase down-ballot turnout voters during presidential election years.
Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in presidential elections in each state. Now they don't matter to their candidate.
In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state, are wasted and don't matter to candidates.
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004.
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
In 2008, voter turnout in the then 15 battleground states averaged seven points higher than in the 35 non-battleground states.
In 2012, voter turnout was 11% higher in the then 9 battleground states than in the remainder of the country.
In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory. But nearly 20 million eligible citizens in those states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—are missing from the voter rolls.
Overall, these “missing voters” amount to half, and in some cases more than half, of the total votes cast for president in these states.
With National Popular Vote, presidential campaigns would poll, organize, visit, and appeal to more than 7 states. One would reasonably expect that voter turnout would rise in 80%+ of the country that is currently conceded months in advance by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.
