Will MI correct the Electoral College bias towards Democrats?

[kohler]

A survey of Michigan voters showed 73% overall support for a national popular vote for President.

Support was 73% among independents, 78% among Democrats, and 68% among Republicans.

By age, support was 77% among 18-29 year olds, 67% among 30-45 year olds, 74% among 46-65 year olds, and 75% for those older than 65.

By gender, support was 86% among women and 59% among men.

On December 11, 2008, The Michigan House of Representatives passed the National Popular Vote bill by a bipartisan 65-36 margin

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency, to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by replacing state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would no longer be a handful of ‘battleground’ states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states, like Michigan, that now are just ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.

The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). The candidate receiving the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founders in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Historically, major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently.
In the 39 states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-83% range or higher. - in recent or past closely divided battleground states, in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 250 electoral votes, including one house in Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9). The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote.com

[kohler]

It's only happened once in the last 100 years that a Presidential candidate has lost the popular vote and still been elected President.

And that was Republican Bush 43.

The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a few thousand voters in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 15 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 7 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.

After the 2012 election, Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points on Tuesday to be assured of winning the Electoral College."

[kohler]

Go to national popular vote, split electoral votes proportionately in all states, or stick with the current winner-take-all by state system. Assigning electoral votes by Congressional district does more to confirm the artificial divisions of some states into gerrymandered districts than to represent the People.

Any trick that effectively distorts the result of the popular vote other than the well-recognized winner-take-all system will be seen as disenfranchising voters.

The state-by-state winner take all method is well-recognized as "disenfranchising" voters.

The National Popular Vote bill ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
   
Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the state counts and national count.
   
When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes.

National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state.  Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don't matter to their candidate.   In 2012, 56,256,178 (44%) of the 128,954,498 voters had their vote diverted by the winner-take-all rule to a candidate they opposed (namely, their state’s first-place candidate).
         
And now votes, beyond the one needed to get the most votes in the state, for winning in a state are wasted and don't matter to candidates.  Utah (5 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004. Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) alone generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes). 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
      
   

[kohler]

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” 
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."

In 1966, Delaware led a group of 12 predominantly low-population states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania) in suing New York in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that New York's use of  winner-take-all effectively disenfranchised voters in their states. The Court declined to hear the case (presumably because of the well-established constitutional provision that the manner of awarding electoral votes is exclusively a state decision).

National Popular Vote is a compact.  Article I-Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution specifically permits states to enter interstate compacts. There are hundreds of major compacts currently in force (and thousands of minor ones).

The compact would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). The candidate receiving the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.

No State governor would be granted the prerogative to cast 50 million votes on behalf of the winner of his state.   Governors can't cast popular (beyond their own single vote) or electoral votes on behalf of their state.

Article II of the National Popular Vote intestate compact
"Right of the People in Member States to Vote for President and Vice President

Each member state shall conduct a statewide popular election for President and Vice President of the United States."

Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code requires all states to report the November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the electors and the number of votes cast for each. 

[kohler]

Ignoring all the partisan fights here, it is INTERESTING that the Electoral College has actually benefited the Democrats in the presidential elections since 2000. In 2004, a uniform swing less than Bush's national popular vote margin would have given Kerry Ohio and the election...also Iowa and New Mexico.

Really though, it's just a function of how the states allocate electoral votes (winner-take-all). Maybe PR (not CD's) would be fairest of all...

Issues with a system in which electoral votes are divided proportionally by state

It would not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote;
It would not improve upon the current situation in which four out of five states and four out of five voters in the United States are ignored by presidential campaigns, but instead, would create a very small set of states in which only one electoral vote is in play (while making most states politically irrelevant), and
It would not make every vote equal.   
It would not guarantee the Presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes in the country.

Most Americans don't ultimately care how well their presidential candidate fares in their state  . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate.  Most Americans think it would be wrong for the candidate with the most popular votes to lose. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.

Under National Popular Vote, every voter, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would matter  in the state counts and national count.  It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
   
Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently.  In the 39 states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-83% range or higher. - in recent or past closely divided battleground states, in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.   
         
The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
               
NationalPopularVote.com