Gov. Brown Endorses Popular Bill Vote For Calif.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Monday that would award all of California's 55 Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, a move intended to ensure that the winner of the popular vote becomes president.
The movement by a group called National Popular Vote aims to prevent a repeat of 2000, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but Republican George W. Bush won the electoral vote and the presidency.
California is the eighth state to sign on, giving the effort 132 of the 270 electoral votes it needs to take effect. The others are Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Washington, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.
Most states, including California, currently have winner-take-all systems that give all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes in that state. The bill Brown signed, AB 459 by Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, passed the Legislature in July.
Many state leaders "are tired of having their voters be ignored in presidential elections," said Tom Golisano, the national spokesman for National Popular Vote.
Brown also signed several other pieces of legislation Monday that make changes to California voting.
They include companion measures by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, and Assemblyman Marty Block, D-San Diego. AB461 and AB503 require write-in votes to be counted if the voter's intent can be determined, even if the voter did not follow all instructions, such as filling in the bubble next to the line where they write the candidate's name.
"Voters who support write-in candidates have an additional burden placed on them," Block said in a statement.
Brown also signed AB1343, which allows permanent absentee voters to miss up to four consecutive statewide general election votes before they are removed from a county's vote-by-mail list, up from the current two.
Supporters of the bill by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, say voters are not notified when they're taken off the rolls after missing two elections. The bill was sponsored by the California State Association of Letter Carriers.
Brown also approved an all-mail voting pilot project in Yolo County when he signed AB413 by Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis. The law will assess the effects of all-mail ballot voting on local elections and report the findings to the Legislature.
The data gleaned from the project "may help guide the future of elections in California," Yamada said in a statement.
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Associated Press writer Sheila V Kumar contributed to this report.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
