Plan for Popular Presidential Vote Quietly Advances

In recent years, however, an organisation called National Popular Vote (NPV) has been pushing an innovative plan to achieve the outcome of a national popular vote, although not by eliminating the electoral college. 

The plan is based on idea by Dr. John Koza, chair of NPV. Koza told IPS he's "not one hundred percent sure" when he came up with the idea. "It's been growing for some time. I lost a bet in college where I thought the U.S. Constitution specified how votes (delegates) were awarded. In fact, it doesn't." 

The NPV plan is to convince a sufficient number of state legislatures to change the way they allocate their delegates to giving all of their delegates to whoever receives the most votes from U.S. citizens nationwide, that is, to whoever wins the national popular vote. 

NPV determined that if enough states to make up a majority of the electoral college delegates agreed to do this, the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide would, by default, become president. 
Over the past few years state legislatures having been doing just that, and NPV is quietly drawing close to its goal of having enough states sign on to declare victory. 
NPV has been enacted by states possessing 132 electoral votes, making up 49 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate it. 

These states are California (55 delegates), Hawaii (four), Illinois (20), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), Vermont (three), and Washington (12), in addition to Washington, DC (three). 

Read it at IPS
Plan for Popular Presidential Vote Quietly Advances
By Matthew Cardinale