National popular vote 2

The proposal is a compact among several states that centers around the adoption of an 888 word law by each of them separately. The law commits the state to cast all of its electoral votes in favor of the candidate who wins the national popular vote. (note: wins the national popular vote means a plurality winner – more than anyone else – it does not mean get a majority of the popular vote) As soon as the states that have adopted it have a total of 270 electoral votes among them, then the pact takes effect. The 270 comes from the fact that that is the number of electoral votes that is required to obtain a majority in the electoral college and that is what will win the election. Go to http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ to find out all about the NPV (= national popular vote) movement.
The first thing to note is that this would not mean that the states that are not party to the pact will be left out of the election. Each person’s vote would count the same whether their state was among those that had adopted the pact or not.
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States) for a full discussion of the pros and cons of the Electoral College.
There have been many attempts to abolish the EC (= Electoral College). These attempts have usually been directed toward replacing the EC with some sort of popular vote. These attempts have usually been dashed by the stringent requirements for amending the constitution. If we go this way my preference among those that I have seen would award the election to the plurality winner of the popular vote provided that plurality was greater than 40%. If no one obtains more than 40%, then hold a runoff between the top two. That is a reasonable method which came close to success in the late sixties (the Bayh-Celler Amendment ).