George Will wrote a piece about this in Newsweek a month or two ago. (Can't find a link) He suggested that with as close as the two parties are these days most elections would end up decided in the House.

An "Electoral College" look alike is one of the methods that the European Union is studying for themselves. The reason it makes some sense is that this style of counting the vote tends to ease the disenfranchisement that small population entities (States or Nations) find themselves when they are united with larger population entities. And this "Leveling" of the playing field is the MAIN reason that the U.S. is so resistant to changinig.
I would not be surprised if the E.U. adopts some similar plan for themselves. The smaller population countries in the E.U. have been voicing opposition to straight "Popular" Vote.

We serioulsy need FEDERAL election Regulations. Its just RIDICULOUS. I mean in Some states you dont even need a freaking I.D. to go to the polls. Thats just WRONG.

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Let your Fingers do the Talking!

States should split their EC vote. It's just ridiculous that a Democrat in Texas and a Republican in California should just not bother to vote, because their vote will not count for anything. States should like it, too, because it makes every state a swing state.

As to the practical questions:

1. It shouldn't take effect until after this election cycle.

2. A simple formula would deal with the apportionment problem, as far as rounding up and rounding down went.

3. It seems to work just fine in Maine and (I think) Nebraska, the two states that currently do it.

4. I don't necessarily agree that ties will be a big problem — there are a lot of ways to divide up 538 votes, and a tie is only one of them. And that could be addressed by the U.S. Congress if split votes become the rule, not the exception. It would require a Constitutional amendment, but the simplest thing would be to add one EC vote to give us an odd number. They could give one EC vote to the winner of the popular vote, for example.

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Man up.

raytri, what about the addition of a viable third or fourth party to the mix? I'm pretty sure the year we had Bush/Clinton/Perot none of the three would have received 270 electoral votes if every state had split their votes. Then the House would have decided.

Well, it would be interesting in that case, since the third-party would still have to win a majority in a Congressional district to earn an EC vote. Such a third-party candidate likely would draw away far fewer EC votes than their popular vote total would suggest.

When it does come up, yes, the House would decide. But if that happened more than once or twice, you can bet the electorate would be leaning hard on Congress to come up with a better plan.

I have a subversive motive here: Get enough states to split their EC vote, and then in the interest of avoiding chaos in a situation such as you describe, they'll almost be forced to go to some form of instant-runoff voting. Voila! Third party candidates truly become viable.

Bwahahahahahaha.....

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Man up.

I'm not against the way the vote is being split in some states, but feel the way Colorado is suggesting to accomplish the split would be idiotic to do on a national scale.

I live in Colorado. I will be voting against it simply because the timing is suspicious. If they had tried to pass it a couple years ago, I would have supported it.

the "concern" that no one will pay attention to the smaller states or cities is bs.
bush is paying no attention to illinois, big or small cities.
this is happening on both sides in many large states and cities, every election year.
it does not mean that we can't get opinions of either candidate.

If this was common in every state, including Florida, Bush would not be president today.