George Will has published this column, opposing Pennsylvania SB 1282, the bill to let each U.S. House district choose its own presidential elector. The column also opposes the National Popular Vote Plan bill.

Will implies, but does not directly say, that the founding fathers wouldn’t like the Pennsylvania bill. Historical evidence contradicts that conclusion. In the very first presidential election, 1789, both Virginia and Massachusetts, homes of the first President and first Vice-President, held popular votes for presidential electors in which each U.S. House district chose its own presidential elector. Delaware, which only had one U.S. House member, split itself into three electoral college districts and let each district choose its own elector. In Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina, the legislature chose the electors. Three states didn’t choose any presidential electors because they hadn’t ratified the Constitution in time. The only states that chose presidential electors by popular vote at-large were Maryland, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.

Will is also unconvincing when he opposes the National Popular Vote Plan bill. He says the National Popular Vote Plan provides that the president would be elected by a majority vote. This is not true. Currently, the winner of the presidential election frequently only has a plurality, and that would continue to be true under the National Popular Vote Plan. Presidents elected without a majority vote in the past fifty years include Richard Nixon in 1968, Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000.

According to this story, the Kansas Secretary of State’s office has released a new voter registration tally, as of October 1, 2011, and that tally shows that one person in Kansas is registered in Americans Elect. This appears to be the first official registration data in any state that shows any registered voters in Americans Elect. The number in Kansas will surely increase, when Kansas voter registration forms listing Americans Elect as a choice begin to circulate around the state.

The other Kansas totals are: Republican 750,908; Democratic 442,647; Libertarian 10,139; Reform 1,065; independent 487,944.

Other states in which Americans Elect will be listed on voter registration forms soon include Nevada and California. Arizona and Florida do not list the qualified minor parties on the voter registration form. In Alaska, Americans Elect is only a limited political party (i.e., a party that is only on the ballot for the presidential election), and so the Alaska registration form won’t list Americans Elect.

On October 6, the final brief was filed in the 10th circuit in Constitution Party of Kansas v Kobach, 11-3152. This last brief is the Constitution Party’s rebuttal. The issue is whether Kansas must permit voters to register into parties that are not ballot-qualified, but which are organized in Kansas and have placed candidates on the Kansas ballot.

Currently, Kansas is one of only two states that have registration by party, and have neither a blank line in the political party area of the form, nor a procedure for an unqualified party to ever be listed on the voter registration form. Kansas is in the 10th circuit, and in 1984 the 10th circuit that Colorado must have some means for a voters to register into an unqualified party.