Electoral College Short Circuit

A number of states are passing legislation that all their presidential electoral votes should go to whoever wins the national popular vote. It only takes a few states doing this to effectively kill the electoral college for everyone: if even one state switches results based on this rule, it would usually be enough to guarantee the popular candidate gets more electoral votes.

This idea is really dumb for several reasons. The first reason is well known. If the popular vote is close enough that hanging chads in Florida can affect the result, then a full national recount will be necessary. An awful lot of lawyers will send their kids to college on the windfall from that one. And you can guarantee the winner will be from the party which has a majority on the Supreme Court. (It's not funny that in Bush v. Gore, the republican justices all voted against states rights and the democrats all voted for it, exactly the opposite of what would be expected.)

The second reason it is dumb is that candidates have no strong reason to campaign in a manner beneficial to those states.

Finally, the only way a state's new law make a difference in the election result would be if the national popular vote overrules the state's own popular vote. Each state's short circuit law can never help the state get its preference elected, it can only hurt.