The American voting system elects legislators based on one geographical district; by majority or plurality (whoever gets the most votes in that district wins). The districts are whole states for Senators and parts of states for House members. This is known as the “First-past-the-post” system.
In the parliamentary system, all legislators are elected at-large, meaning from the entire country’s electorate. Voters choose one party, and the party’s total votes determine how many legislative seats the party gets. The legislators are pre-determined on a list of party candidates. The Prime Minister is the person who is first on the list of the party which got the most votes.
The first-past-the-post system tends towards two parties, as we have in America. The parliamentary system favors multiple parties, since any party getting enough votes for even one seat, gets a voice in Parliament.
SENATORS
The 17th Amendment made it so U.S. Senators were directly elected by popular vote. Prior to 1913, Senators were appointed.
THE PRESIDENT
The President, of course, is still not elected by popular vote, but by the Electoral College. For example, in the presidential election of 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but George Bush won the Electoral College vote.
BLACK VOTING RIGHTS
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were passed following the Civil War, in the later 1860s. They outlawed slavery and extended civil rights and suffrage (voting rights) to former slaves. The LEGAL right to vote for African-Americans was established, but numerous restrictions kept many blacks from ACTUALLY voting until the 1960s Voting Rights Act.
WOMEN VOTING RIGHTS
The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920. This amendment resulted from an international movement of “Suffragettes”. Women still lacked the right to vote in Switzerland until the 1970s, and as of 1990 women could not vote in Kuwait.
VOTING AGE
The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. This occurred in 1971, amid the Vietnam War, when 18-year-olds were routinely drafted and sent to war without the right to vote.
By 2012, the National Popular Vote bill could guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. Every vote would be counted for and assist the candidate for whom it was cast – just as votes from every county are equal and important when a vote is cast in a Governor’s race. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
Now 2/3rds of the states and voters are ignored — 19 of the 22 smallest and medium-small states and big states like California, Georgia, New York, and Texas. The current winner-take-all rule (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states, and not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution, ensures that the candidates do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral College, which would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.
The bill has been endorsed or voted for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado– 68%, Iowa –75%, Michigan– 73%, Missouri– 70%, New Hampshire– 69%, Nevada– 72%, New Mexico– 76%, North Carolina– 74%, Ohio– 70%, Pennsylvania — 78%, Virginia — 74%, and Wisconsin — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Maine — 77%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Rhode Island — 74%, and Vermont — 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas –80%, Kentucky — 80%, Mississippi –77%, Missouri — 70%, North Carolina — 74%, and Virginia — 74%; and in other states polled: California — 70%, Connecticut — 74% , Massachusetts — 73%, Minnesota — 75%, New York — 79%, Washington — 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was counted and mattered to their candidate.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 30 state legislative chambers, in 20 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These six states possess 73 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.