filed under Activism | Politics
RI poll out on National Popular Vote
1:09PM ON
06/05/2008
BY
Dave Segal
New results show strong support in RI for the direct election of the president:
Three-quarters of Rhode Islanders want to scrap the Electoral College and choose future presidents by national popular vote, according to a poll conducted for a national advocacy group that is pushing for the switch…
Among the findings of the June 1 telephone survey of 800 potential Rhode Island voters: 74 percent support the national popular vote initiative, which cleared the Rhode Island Senate last week and is now pending in the House.
The numbers are even stronger among Dems and indys — or those who cast votes for most member of our overwhelmingly Democratic legislature:
The pollsters deduced that “support for the proposal is 78% among independents, 86% among liberal Democrats, 85% among moderate Democrats, 60.
The National Popular Vote legislation handily passed the State Senate a couple of weeks ago, and is up for a hearing (and hopefully a vote) in the House Finance Committee on Tuesday.
Passage of NPV in Rhode Island would be a huge boon to the national effort: There’s still a notion out there that the Electoral College system gives small states extra influence, while in practice, only 1 of the 13 smallest states — New Hampshire — is a swing state, and receives any attention from presidential candidates.
(And a lefty, populist aside: Even if small states were more influential under the current system, that wouldn’t make it right.)
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