The National Popular Vote Campaign’s
Tom Golisano – a three-time New York gubernatorial candidate – says a great majority of Americans want to eliminate the Electoral College and have the popular vote decide who should be elected president of the United States.
In a Friday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Golisano, a businessman and philanthropist – who is also a founding member of the Independence Party of New York – said the premises for his popular-vote group are very simple.
“There's two of them: One, we think that the candidate that gets the most votes in a presidential race should always win the White House,” Golisano said. “Secondly, across the United States every vote should count equally – [which] with the electoral process we have is not true.
“The thing that's unique about this, first of all, 75 percent of the voters in America want this. The efforts we're putting forth, are just a reflection of that polling,” he added.
Golisano said most people believe the Electoral College is part of the U.S. Constitution.
“It's nothing but a compact among the states, just like they have compacts for natural resources, or transportation, those types of things,” he said. “So it's really not a federal decision. It's a state decision, and that's how we got to where we are today – a compact the states had, and that's how we're going to change it.
“The people that have a tendency to be against it or concerned about it, I think it's mainly just change – they're afraid of change,” he continued. “They don't quite understand how it's going to affect.
“I could honestly say Republicans think it's going to improve the Democratic situation, the Democrats think it's better for the Republicans.”
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