Lawmakers OK winner-take-all bill

Patrick gets measure to bypass Electoral College for president

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.
“What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America,’’ Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said as he introduced the bill on the Senate floor.
Under the law, which was enacted by the House last week, all 12 of the state's electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally. But the bill would take effect only if enough states adopted the legislation to combine for at least 270 electoral votes, the amount needed to win the presidency. Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have adopted the legislation. If enough states pass the legislation, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes.
Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes.
That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.
Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website.
The current Electoral College system is confusing and causes presidential candidates to focus unduly on a handful of battleground states, supporters say. They also say that the popular vote winner has lost in four of the nation's 56 elections.
Presidential candidates now "ignore wide swaths of the country" that they consider strong blue or red states and focus their campaigning on contested states, Eldridge said.
If the president were picked by national popular vote, he argued, candidates would spread their attention more evenly.
"That's really what we're talking about, making sure that every voter, no matter where they live, that they're being reached out to," he said.
Opponents say the current system works. They are concerned about a possible scenario in which Candidate X wins nationally, but Candidate Y has won in Massachusetts. In that case, all the state's 12 electoral votes would go to Candidate X, the candidate who was not supported by Massachusetts voters.
Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, also criticized the proponents for not following the normal procedures to seek a constitutional amendment.
"The thing about this that bothers me the most is it's so sneaky," he said. "This is the way that liberals do things a lot of times, very sneaky.
"This is sort of an end run around the Constitution," Tisei said.
The measure passed both branches of the Legislature in 2008, but did not make it all the way through the process.
 

Martin Finucane can be reached at mfinucane@globe.com

Correction: An earlier version of this story failed to mention that the law would take effect only if a minimum number of states adopted the legislation. It needs approval in enough states to account for at least 270 electoral votes, the number needed to win the presidency.