Mo. Senate panel weighs "popular vote' for president

Four times in U.S. history - most recently in 2000 - the presidential candidate winning the most votes in the country didn't win the office.

In that election, George W. Bush got about 540,000 fewer votes than Democrat Al Gore but won 271 votes in the electoral college - one more than the minimum needed to become president.

Missouri lawmakers are being asked to join the the "National Popular Vote" effort, to make sure that the national election winner also gets the majority of the electoral college votes.

"It's about fairness," Sen. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, told the state Senate's Judiciary committee Wednesday afternoon.

He sponsors the bill that, if passed, would bring Missouri into the National Popular Vote compact of states.

"Basically, every election in this country is decided by a simple majority, winner takes all," he said. "Only the president is elected by a distribution of special electors, broken down by each state."

Schatz noted the U.S. Constitution already gives each state power allocate electoral college members as they see fit. "It's time that we direct those electors to follow the will of the nation," he said.

Ten states and the District of Columbia, with a total of 165 electors, already have passed the proposal.

Under the current way electoral votes are counted, Schatz added, most states lose out on in-person visits from the presidential candidates.

Missouri once was a "battleground" state, he said, but "those days are past. ... Missouri is ignored in campaign events and campaign spending."

Rob Johnson, an Oklahoma lawyer and former state senator who previously had sponsored the idea there, told the Missouri committee Wednesday he feels the system is unbalanced.

"This is an effort to, actually, make all the votes count and make every state just as relevant as they should be, as opposed to just a handful of battleground states," Johnson said.

The electoral college was one of the compromises the U.S. Constitution's writers made in 1787, trying to balance the powers and impact of the larger and smaller states.

But, especially after the 2000 election, many have complained the electoral college no longer is needed.

However, Scott Drexel of San Francisco, California - also representing National Popular Vote, told the Missouri senators: "The electoral college is not the problem. It is not now, and has never been.

"The problem is the winner-take-all system" where a state's entire electoral college vote goes to the candidate with the most votes in that state.

Under the proposed compact, states would direct their electoral college members to cast their votes for the candidate who got the most votes in the popular election.

That would mean that, in the 2008 and 2012 elections, Missouri's electoral college votes would have gone to Barack Obama even though John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 won more Missouri's votes.

We asked Johnson why he supports National Popular Vote instead of asking the states to adopt proportional voting, where each state's electoral college voting would reflect the differences among each state's voters.

"You can't force every state to do it," he explained, "and, unless every single state in the country did it, it wouldn't have the proper effect."

Each state already has the authority to do proportional electoral college voting, Johnson said, "but it puts them at a disadvantage, because their influence is even less."

If Missouri lawmakers decide to join the compact, they would continue following the current law until the compact included enough states to have a total of 270 electoral votes.

Then it would take effect at the next presidential election.

Trent England of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs "Save Our States" program told the Missouri committee the compact isn't a good idea.

"If you have National Popular Vote," he said, "you would ultimately have disputes that would cause Americans to demand federal power over elections."

Right now, he said, the nation has different election rules in each state - and National Popular Vote doesn't change that.

"In a National Popular Vote world, the state of Missouri would, essentially, have to accept - without the ability to investigate or verify - the results of 40 other electoral districts, the 49 states and the District of Columbia," he said.

The committee took no action Wednesday on the proposal.