Go NPV!

I'm delighted to read about the NPV campaign. It's the first I'd heard of this and I'm all for it. When I was growing up in the 70's in Pennsylvania my mother was very active in the League of Women Voters who had a campaign to move past the electoral college block voting system. While that never came to fruition, I've always wondered if the U.S. could ever tackle this issue.

I believe a large fraction of Americans don't even realize the president is chosen by anything but the national popular vote. The electoral college is a 200-year old vestige from a time before telegraphs let alone phones, internet and satellite.

It was originally designed to work rather like a party convention: delegates were picked to bring good judgment and experience, and they were to meet and choose the president at the College - perhaps a surprise choice. Over time, the states passed laws to bind their own delegates to a state-wide popular vote.

This state-based winner-take-all counting makes for a zany checkerboard of unequal representation, and creates lots of work for brain-trust state-splitting bean counters. Some states are a foregone conclusion, while others that are "in play" get influence far beyond their numbers. My vote and yours do not count equally, depending on where we live. The swing-state tail wags the national dog. Candidates play to specific local hot-button issues in those states, never mind what the whole country wants.

In 2000 we saw what a mess that can create. There can be no hanging-chad recount crisis in a popular vote; within hours we can tell who won the popular vote, and that's never going to be a statistical tie.

I urge Americans from every state and all parties to support NPV. Let the person with the most votes go to the White House. This is best for all of us.