In addition to the 165 votes worth of states that have enacted the national popular vote, states representing another 97 votes have passed the legislation in one of their two state legislative bodies. He said that in recent years, the initiative had received more bipartisan support, passing in the Republican-controlled Oklahoma and Arizona state houses of representatives but failing in both state senates. “When we started in 2007, GWB was president so it was viewed Democratically,” Koza said. Koza said that was less a function of how partisan the idea is and more a reflection of where the country was when the campaign was launched. All 11 – including Illinois, New Jersey and Washington – are considered safe Democratic states. Right now, the states that have enacted national popular vote bills represent 165 electoral college votes, largely thanks to California with its mammoth 55 votes. National popular vote advocates counter that, under the current system, only about 12 battleground states ever get any attention anyway. Some critics argue that without such battlegrounds, candidates would ignore rural Americans to focus attention on urban centers with high densities of voters. The national popular vote would also end the intense focus on swing states such as Florida and Ohio that frequently change hands and that have characterized the modern US presidential election for decades. Koza’s campaign would not technically abolish the electoral college, but it would ensure that the candidate with the most votes was named the winner of presidential elections. The new method would only become effective once enough states (270 electoral votes’ worth) sign on. Instead of pushing for a constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds of Congress to sign on, campaign organizers seek to convince state legislatures to pledge their state’s delegates to the winner of the national popular vote. One potential workaround that has been proposed is Koza’s so-called national popular vote legislation. Regardless, there has been no open floor debate on this issue since 1979. Senator Diane Feinstein of California has tried to build support for a direct election several times over her past three terms, arguing in 2007 that “every vote should be treated equally regardless of the state in which it is cast”. The arguments then were not dissimilar to the ones advocates offer now. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump’s commanding electoral college lead and his unprecedentedly high unfavorable ratings in opinion polls both add dramatically to the dissonance of the outcome.
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