The National Popular Vote Agreement passed the Connecticut House after initially being defeated by one vote. See how your representative voted <here> As reported by the Hartford Courant <read>
The vote was a nail-biter to the end, and it passed only after four veteran Democrats switched their votes from negative to affirmative: Deputy House Speakers Robert Godfrey of Danbury and Emil “Buddy” Altobello of Meriden, and Reps. Peggy Sayers of Windsor Locks and Peter Tercyak of New Britain.
As frequent CTVotersCount readers are aware we strongly oppose the National Popular Vote Agreement. For more information read our Case Against The National Popular Vote or a recent talk by Conn College Professor Dorothy B. James.
Most votes on this bill are along party lines with Democrats generally for the bill and Republicans generally against the bill. However, there are prominent Democrates who oppose the Agreement including Connecticut Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz and Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie.
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Update: Similar articles at CTNewsJunkie.com, TheDay, and ConnPolitics.tv . Here is a conglomerate of my comments on those sites:
There are other reasons to be against the National Popular Vote agreement: 1)The national vote number is not accurate, it is the result of error prone counts in various states which usually would not matter except in close swing states. 2)There is no national recount law to correct those results. 3)Close elections can be expected to all end at the Supreme Court as voters could sue their Secretary of the State for using unreliable results.
Mr. Ritchie’s opposition is based, in part, on the fact that there is no national recount law that would provide a number that would have any hope of being credible.
Since state electors would be awarded by Secretaries of the State based on questionable results in other states, I can see close elections all ending up in the Supreme Court based on voters suing their Secretary and others states’ Secretaries based on providing or relying on questionable results.
Also, in passing, I mention that the following argument is questionable:
“In 2008, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money and campaign visits in just six states and 98 percent of their money in just 15 states, a press release touting the bills passage said.”
This is a media centric concern. In recent elections almost all of the media money goes to out of state media moguls. Does the average voter in Connecticut need more phone calls and candidate ads to be better informed? No. Do candidates have to visit Connecticut for the election to be covered responsibly by the Connecticut media? I doubt it.
Several comments on those sites are from “mvymvy” who shows up on many blogs, with comments as useful and redundant as his or her name, but does not actually address the issues that we bring up. I suspect because the facts and logic are with our arguments.
