California is one step closer to joining a national movement that would change the way that the Electoral College works without amending the U.S. Constitution.

AB 2948 by Assemblymember Tom Umberg, Chair of the Assembly Elections Committee is a simple bill that would have California join in an interstate compact with other states to award our electoral votes to the Presidential candidate who won the national popular vote.

[ I like this. It seems like a decent way to handle the situation. I have some concern over the fact that some states could be effectively forced to adopt the plan as long as enough other states do so, but not much concern.

Fundamentally, I've always been displeased with the all or nothing nature of the electoral system used by most states. This feels like a workable alternative.

Now, does anyone want to run some numbers on the likelihood of this becoming the reality? It requires enough states to sign on to comprise a majority of electors. California has 55 of the 270 needed. Where are the other 215 likely to come from? How likely is it, really?

The ratio of electoral weight vs. population weight is very interesting. If you plot it, you notice that the 15 most populous states all have a lower than 1.0 ratio. They weigh proportionally less than they would in a direct voting situation. On the other hand, I calculated Wyoming to have a 3.18 multiplier. (Georgians, you're at 0.96, whereas NY, CA and TX all sit at 0.85 - that's 26% of the population having 22% of the voting power.)

The only useful opposition I can think of, then, to a more direct method is that small states will be reduced. Ultimately this isn't a convincing argument for me, because while representation (a la Congress) ought to enable small states to compete, I think electing a president shouldn't be about states, but about people. ]

California Assembly Passes Electoral College Reform - California Progress Report