National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

[beneficii]

This is pretty damn stupid, especially considering the loser of the popular vote has only been elected President once in the past 130 years.  Plus ... I know all you liberals who want big cities to elect the President are supporting this, but think about it.  No more "Electoral College Calculator".  "Discuss with maps" will become an anachronism.  Is electing a President who shares your ideological beliefs really more important than having fun, exciting elections with maps?

If you answer yes, you're not a true political junkie.

That doesn't mean the fact that we have an electoral college (EC) instead of a national popular vote (NPV) doesn't affect elections in other ways.  Yes, it's true, the 2000 election was the first since 1888 where the winner of the NPV lost the EC, but in 2004 the winner of the NPV came within 60,000 votes of one state (Ohio) of losing the EC, and similar outcomes occurred in 1976 and 1960.  With the elections turning on just a couple of states like that, don't you think that means campaigners will tend to focus on those states more, to the detriment of "safe states"?

Indeed, even in elections that aren't so close, we still get a major emphasis in campaigning on these "swing states," where almost the entire focus of the campaign is just winning those few states, to the detriment of the voters of all others.  There is no incentive to try to turn out the vote in safe states.

Here's what has happened in recent elections:

http://archive.fairvote.org/tracker/?page=27&pressmode=showspecific&showarticle=230

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/August/20070820155635bpuh0.4478418.html

As for the Framers, a lot of them did favor an NPV system, but there was an issue with the southern states wanting representation for their free blacks and slaves, without having to let them vote:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/elector1787.html

James Madison on his views at the Convention (he referred to himself in third person):

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This is a good source on the issue:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/electoralcoll.htm