You guys are missing the point. This bill would give California more political power. It would encourage more Californians to get out and vote, which could give the national popular vote to the loser (ie a Democrat), even though they could lose the electoral college. If this catches fire in other states, we could move toward a direct election, which would give significantly more power to populous states like CA and NY.
You are right. In the long-term this would be an end-arround the Electoral College to allow the national popular vote to determine the winner. You can bet if this catches on there will be a tremendous increase in vote fraud.
No it doesn't. It means regardless of how Californians vote, their electoral votes will be decided by the country. Californian votes will only make up about 12% of the weight of their electoral votes.
Glad someone here gets the point.
This would encourage solidly Democrat states like California, where Republicans tend to stay home, to drive up their vote count to make the national popular vote more Democrat.
One reason Gore won the popular vote in 2000 was the overwhelming Democrat margin in California. Republicans stayed home because they knew it was meaningless.
If this goes through and passes constitutional muster, watch California deliver massive Democrat margins in 2008 to overwhelm the popular vote count nationally.
And about 2 million of those votes will be illegal aliens.