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Chris

There's a plan afoot to replace the Electoral College

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Colorado voters have decided to join a growing list of states that will decide a president by popular vote, the latest move in a national chess match over the way the United States elects its presidents.

Called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, the agreement calls for states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.

So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have approved the pact, covering 196 electoral votes of the required 270 to win the presidency.

That 270 matters: The states that have approved legislation to join the compact agreed it would not take effect until the 270 threshold is reached. Once it does, those states will have the power to use their Electoral College votes to elect a winner, according to the popular vote. This uses the Electoral College to effectively abolish the Electoral College.

Colorado’s Senate was the first state legislative body to try to pass the national popular vote proposal in 2006, though the legislation failed multiple times. It was ultimately signed into law last year by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, but was then was successfully challenged by Coloradans Vote, a group that gathered enough signatures to invoke a rarely used referendum to ask Colorado voters to confirm or repeal the law.

John Koza was part of that early effort and was the creator and chair of the National Popular Vote nonprofit. He is a computer scientist who is known for his work in genetics and even co-invented the scratch-off lottery ticket and has had more than a passing interest in how the U.S. presidential election operates.

“I've been interested in the quirks of the Electoral College since the ’60s,” Koza said.“Several of us got together and said maybe a state-based approach, which is what we have, would be a better way to try to get a national popular vote. So that's how the national popular vote got started.”

While the compact has gained traction in states run by Democratic governors, it has been supported by some Republicans such as former RNC chair Michael Steele.

Critics, however, say the popular vote initiative will encourage candidates to focus on large cities, which tend to favor Democratic candidates. Koza takes issue with that.

“We know how candidates campaign now, and they would campaign the same way they do now, except it would be spread out over the whole country,” he said.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1247159

 

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Without going into a soliloquy about the EC, I will simply say that so long as there are Republicans in power at any level of Federal or State Government, they will throw their bodies in the way of that movement in an effort to slow it.

There have been six Presidential Elections since 2000, Republicans have won the popular vote once — despite having won the Presidency three times.

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