Late last week, both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to add their state to the National Popular Vote Compact, a plan to effectively abolish the Electoral College and ensure that the winner of the popular vote becomes president in future elections. The bill now moves to Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D), who says he supports it.

Under the compact, states whose total votes equal at least 270 electoral votes — the amount necessary to elect the president — must pledge to award their electors to whoever wins the popular vote in the nation as a whole, even if that person does not carry their state. The compact does not take effect until the requite number of states have signed onto it, and must also be approved by Congress before it can take effect.

One effect of this compact, in addition to preventing a situation like 2000 where the loser of the popular vote ultimately moved into the White House, is it would also shut down attempts to rig the Electoral College itself. Earlier this year, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said that “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” should rig future presidential elections by allocating their electoral votes by congressional district. Such a plan would not only take advantage of gerrymandering that benefits Republicans, it would also be limited to blue states currently controlled by Republican state governments. Red states would continue to allocate 100 percent of their electoral votes to the Republican candidate:

Three times in American history, the loser of the national popular vote became President of the United States — most recently when George W. Bush entered the White House with an assist from his fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, even in elections where the American people ultimately see their choice become president, candidates focus their efforts on just a handful of key swing states — Ohio, Florida, Colorado, etc. — while largely ignoring most of the country. If a plan passed by the Oregon House yesterday becomes sufficiently widespread, however, these practices will end and future presidents will be determined solely according to the will of the voters:

The legislation would require Oregon to cast its seven Electoral College ballots for the candidate who wins the national vote, rather than the one who gets the most votes in Oregon.

It would take effect only if a compact is enacted in states with a majority in the electoral college.

Nine states with 132 electoral votes have enacted it, about half of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

In addition to preventing incidents like the 2000 election, where the loser of the popular vote becomes the winner of the only vote that matters, this National Popular Vote plan would also prevent Republicans from enacting two plans they’ve proposed to rig the Electoral College.

The first such plan, which Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus proposed enacting in “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” would rig presidential elections by allocating most electoral votes in several blue states by congressional district, while still awarding 100 percent of red state electors to Republicans. Moreover, because these states are highly gerrymandered to benefit Republicans, it would lead the the absurd result where the Republican candidate would win the majority of the electoral votes in many states even if they lost the popular vote:

The second GOP election rigging plan is currently pending in the Pennsylvania state senate. Under this plan, the blue state of Pennsylvania would allocate its electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in that state, while red states would once again award 100 percent of their votes to the Republican:

One of the most basic tasks the two political parties must perform every four years is identifying 538 people loyal to their nominee, who will cast the only votes that truly matter in the presidential election when the Electoral College convenes to choose the next president. Apparently, Team Romney may have failed in that task:

At least three Republican electors say they may not support their party’s presidential ticket when the Electoral College meets in December to formally elect the new president, escalating tensions within the GOP and adding a fresh layer of intrigue to the final weeks of the White House race.

The electors – all are supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul – told The Associated Press they are exploring options should Mitt Romney win their states. They expressed frustration at how Republican leaders have worked to suppress Paul’s conservative movement and his legion of loyal supporters.

“They’ve never given Ron Paul a fair shot, and I’m disgusted with that. I’d like to show them how disgusted I am,” said Melinda Wadsley, an Iowa mother of three who was selected a Republican elector earlier this year. She said she believes Paul is the better choice and noted that the Electoral College was founded with the idea that electors wouldn’t just mimic the popular vote.

While it is certainly amusing that the Republican Party is apparently no better at identifying faithful Electoral College candidates than they are at selecting prime time convention speakers who won’t carry on a conversation with a chair, the real lesson here is that the Electoral College is a really bad idea. If a majority of the American people vote for Mitt Romney next November, than his voters have a right to expect Romney to be sworn in as president and Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan to be sworn in a vice-president. The people’s choice should not be thwarted because an obscure group of Ron Paul activists infiltrate an antiquated selection process.

Several states signed onto an effort to effectively neutralize the Electoral College known as the National Popular Vote compact.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) attacked a proposal to switch to a national popular vote for presidential elections during a speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday.

McConnell and six Republican secretaries of state discussed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), a proposed plan for using a popular vote in presidential elections. The NPV would guarantee whichever candidate wins the popular vote would also win the electoral college – preventing a repeat of the 2000 election when Al Gore won the most votes but still lost the presidency. It would do so by getting states to agree to collectively award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner, but the compact would only kick in once states with a majority of the electoral college sign on. Currently, eight states and the District of Columbia have joined the NPV, comprising 132 of the needed 270 electoral votes for the compact to take effect.

Rather than embracing the NPV as a way to solidify the Constitution’s guarantee of “one man, one vote,” McConnell lambasted the plan, calling it a “genuine threat to our country.” Though McConnell admitted that the notion of a popular presidential vote where the candidate who receives the most votes wins is “appealing,” he called the idea “absurd and dangerous.”

MCCONNELL: Hosting this seminar on the most important issue [the National Popular Vote proposal] in America nobody’s talking about. Everybody’s following the debt crisis in Europe, the presidential election in America, unemployment statistics, but nobody is paying much attention to the genuine threat to our country. That’s what I want to address this morning.

Watch it:

This is not the first time McConnell has expressed unease with elections and popular votes. In July, the Republican Leader took to the Senate floor to declare that we must rewrite the Constitution and add in an amendment permanently entrenching a Tea Party policy agenda because “elections” haven’t “worked.”

Awarding the presidency to the candidate who receives the most votes is an eminently reasonable and democratic position. McConnell’s suggestion — that ensuring the person who gets the most votes becomes president is a “threat to our country” — is not.