On August 14, the California State Senate concurred in the Assembly’s amendments, and passed SB 37. The bill is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. The California legislature had also passed the plan in 2006, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had vetoed it.
Were there enough votes this time to override a possible veto by Gov. Schwarzenegger?
It passed the Senate 21-16 with 3 abstentions, but the 3 abstentors had voted for the bill last year. There was one Democrat opposing, and no Republicans supported the bill. The vote in the House was 45-30 with 5 abstentions.
The current version was introduced in 2007. A “such” was amended to “those” by the Senate. The House amended the “those” back to a “such” last September.
The Senate finally got around to concurring with the change, presumably in time for the election campaign.
Most likely it will not get signed, simply because of the current budget mess, there not being the 27 votes needed to override a veto, plus Ahnold has vowed to not sign any other bills until a budget is passed.
The LPCA passed over this bill because we missed it, but in general terms the lack of proportionality in the electoral vote is still a problem, in the same way as now. winner-take-all on electoral votes disenfranchises up to 60% of the vote or more, depending on the state and number of candidates. Opposition argues that the bill bypasses Framers’ intent in creating interstate compacts on the electoral vote. We’re not so sure that’s a valid argument, and a better argument is that such a compact is purely political and not representative of the people’s votes.
Michael Seebeck
Legislative Analysis
LPCA