Hawaii enacts National Popular Vote bill — 19% of the way to 270 [View All]

Note: This was an email I received from nationalpopularvote.com

(Once this bill is enacted in states totalling 270 EV's, there will be no more Electoral College - or if there is, it will be completely irrelevant because the states passing this will allocate ALL of their electors based on the winner of the National popular vote - not by the winner of the popular vote in their particular state.)

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The Hawaii legislature yesterday enacted the National Popular Vote bill by overriding the veto of Governor Linda Lingle. Only 7 legislators supported the governor's veto. The Vote in the House was 36–3 and the vote in the Senate was 20–4. The action in Hawaii follows last week's passage of the bill by both houses of the Vermont legislature.

The National Popular Vote bill has now been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes—19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

The bill has passed 17 state legislative chambers in the U.S. (one-sixth of the total), including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Vermont.

The bill is currently endorsed by 1,005 state legislators—440 sponsors (in 47 states) and an additional 565 legislators who have cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.



Small States are Especially Disadvantaged by Current System

It is sometimes asserted that the current system of electing the President helps the nation's least populous states. It is also sometimes asserted that the small states confer a partisan advantage on one political party. In fact, neither statement is true.

The small states are not ignored because they are small, but because they are politically non-competitive in presidential elections. Twelve of the 13 smallest states are politically non-competitive, and these 12 states are almost totally ignored by presidential candidates. On the other hand, New Hampshire receives immense attention in the November general election because it is a closely divided "battleground" state.

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska regularly vote Republican, and Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC regularly vote Democratic. These 12 states together contain 11 million people. Because of the two electoral-vote bonus that each state receives, the 12 non-competitive small states have 40 electoral votes. However, the two-vote bonus is an entirely illusory advantage. Ohio has 11 million people and has "only" 20 electoral votes. As we all know, the 11 million people in Ohio are the center of attention in presidential campaigns, while the 11 million people in the 12 non-competitive small states are utterly irrelevant. Nationwide election of the President would make each of the voters in the 12 smallest states as important as an Ohio voter.

The fact that the bonus of two electoral votes is an illusory benefit to the small states has been widely recognized by the small states for some time. In 1966, Delaware led a group of 12 predominantly low-population states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania) in suing New York in the U.S. Supreme Court. Delaware and the other plaintiff states argued that New York's use of the winner-take-all rule effectively disenfranchised voters in their states. The Court declined to hear the case (presumably because of the well-established constitutional provision that the manner of awarding electoral votes is exclusively a state decision). Ironically, defendant New York is no longer a closely divided "battleground" state (as it was in the 1950's and 1960's) and today suffers the very same disenfranchisement as the 12 non-competitive small states. A vote in New York is, today, equal to a vote in Wyoming—both are equally worthless and irrelevant in presidential elections.