"National Popular Vote" formed
National Popular Vote announced today: Republicans, Democrats and Independents, including former Republican Representative and Independent presidential candidate John Anderson, joined together today to call for the national popular election of the President. They offered a novel approach which is politically practical because it relies on the Constitutional power given to states to allocate Presidential electors.
“The occupant of the nation’s highest office should be determined by winning the national popular vote,” said Anderson, who today is chair of FairVote. “The current system of allocating electoral votes on a statewide winner-take-all basis dampens voter participation by concentrating campaign efforts on a shrinking number of battleground states and can have the disheartening effect of trumping the national popular vote.”
Today marked the launch of efforts to introduce and pass bills in all 50 state legislatures that would award the states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The National Popular Vote plan will go into effect when the number of states that have passed the law can determine the outcome of the Presidential election.