98.2% of the Presidential Elections were decided by the person who got the most electoral votes and only the electoral tie of 1800 kept it from being 100%. You may want your vote to go directly to your presidential candidate, but it doesn't. A bigger travesty would be to have the electoral votes of your state go to a person who didn't win your state just because of this proposed electoral suicide pact.
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Just like sports, political elections involve getting the most votes (wins) in each election (series) participated. There are 52 elections for president. 51 to decide electors and then the vote of the Electoral College. If there is a tie, the House decides. Imagine the outrage that would ensue should there be the need for a recount as a result of the initiative. You can't force every state to do a recount because they are state elections, but are we going to do a recount in California even though the D won 60% of the vote because the national D candidate needed it to be 61% to win the national election?
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National Popular VOte is not an electoral suicide pact.
National Popular Vote allows individual states to use their unqualified and absolute right to have the Electoral College accomplish a goal that more than two-thirds of Americans, throughout the country, have consistently supported since polling on this began in 1944.
States enacting National Popular Vote replace their state or district winner-take-all laws to guarantee every vote, everywhere, in every election matters to the candidates, is equal and counts, and the candidate with the most votes in the country wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
National Popular Vote did not invent popular elections. Having election results determined by the candidate getting the most individual votes is not some scary, untested idea loaded with unintended consequences.
“The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The NPV states aren’t delegating their Electoral College votes to voters outside the state; they have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.” - Vikram David Amar
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls
in recent or past closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA --75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%;
in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%;
in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and
in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.
Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?"
Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?"
Support for a National Popular Vote
South Dakota -- 75% for Question 1, 67% for Question 2.
Connecticut -- 74% for Question 1, 68% for Question 2,
Utah -- 70% for Question 1, 66% for Question 2