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BY TRACY PFEIFFER
ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY
You're watching multisource politics news analysis from Newsy.
Red state -- blue state -- purple state -- what about -- whoever-wins-state?
That’s what could happen if more U.S. states jump on board a growing movement -- dedicating electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote in presidential elections.
The latest on the bandwagon? California.
“The governor signed a bill that gives all of California’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. California is the eighth state to approve the measure that would essentially make the electoral college obsolete.”
Analysts say the bill out of the country’s most populous state is the movement’s biggest win yet.
But federal law says -- the change would need approval from states with a combined 270 electoral votes.
“The agreement would become effective only if states possessing a majority of the nation's 538 Electoral College votes agree. Eight other states and the District of Columbia have signed on, committing 74 electoral votes. The bill Brown signed today adds California's 55.”
Most reports point to the major catalyst -- as being the 2000 election, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore despite losing the popular vote. One of the movement’s founders tells the San Francisco Chronicle -- it’s time for a change.
“It’s about voter equality. If you don’t have a national popular vote, people in some states have more say than people in other states.”
Speaking of founders -- a writer from the conservative Weekly Standard says -- hey, don’t you remember the Founding Fathers wrote the electoral college into the U.S. Constitution?
“Attempts, like this one, to make end runs around the Constitution always have unintended consequences, and if the proposal ended up influencing the election, it would almost certainly end up at the Supreme Court, which isn’t, under our electoral scheme, supposed to decide elections.”
Currently, all states except for Nebraska and Maine award all of their electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote in that state.
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