The highly contested 2000 presidential election refocused attention on the way the United States elects its chief executive. George W. Bush won the Electoral College vote, but lost the popular vote to then Vice-President Al Gore.
In 2009, the Washington Legislature added our state to a movement known as the National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact. The NPV is an agreement among various states and the District of Columbia to replace their current rules regarding the apportionment of presidential electors with rules guaranteeing the election of the candidate with the most popular votes in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
In other words, our presidents would be elected by winning the popular vote, not by winning the Electoral College vote.
The agreement would go into effect though an interstate compact once states that collectively have 271 electoral votes adopt the compact. The big news this week is that New York has now signed on to this interstate agreement. With New York, the NPV now has eleven jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes total. This is 61% of the electoral votes necessary to move away from the Electoral College.
One result of moving to the NPV could be more visits from presidential candidates to our state. In the 2012 cycle, the candidates for president from the two major political parties totaled 3 visits to Washington. Compare this to the 76 visits Ohio received and the 64 visits Florida received in the same cycle.