Electoral College could be weakened

Atlanta area lawmakers plan to push legislation next year calling for the popular vote —- rather than the Electoral College —- to decide who wins presidential elections.

State Sen. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta) and Rep. Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield (D-Atlanta) announced the legislation on the same day members of the Electoral College met in Atlanta and across the country to formally cast the ballots that will elect Barack Obama president.

“Now is the time to move popular-vote legislation onto the front burner,” Orrock said at a Capitol news conference. “This is a nonpartisan issue. This is an issue about expanding democracy.”

Currently, each state has members of the Electoral College equal to its two senators plus its U.S. representatives. Georgia has 15 members. That group of 538 electors decides the outcome of the election.

Legislation to change the electoral system has passed at least one legislative chamber in about 20 states.

The movement gained steam in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but Republican George W. Bush won the Electoral College.

Orrock and Stuckey-Benfield said many states are ignored by presidential candidates because they are thought to be in the bag for one of the parties.

Typically battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, get much of the attention from candidates because their electoral votes are up in the air. In a winner-take-all system, a candidate who carries the popular vote in a state gets all the electoral votes.

While Obama made an unsuccessful push to win Georgia this year, Democrats have ignored the state in the past, figuring Republicans would gain the electoral votes.

“The current system allows the needs and interests of Georgia to be ignored,” Stuckey-Benfield said. “If we had a national popular vote, then every vote would be equal and candidates would campaign for every vote.”

The bill Orrock and Stuckey-Benfield are promoting is part of the National Popular Vote campaign encouraging states to enact legislation that would give their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide. That would ensure the candidate with the most popular votes nationally wins the election.

The change would take effect once states with at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed by a presidential candidate to win, pass the legislation.

Orrock plans to file the bill in the Senate during the 2009 session, which starts Jan. 12. A spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Senate’s president, said he had not seen the legislation and could not comment on its chances of passage.