COLORADO, USA — A citizen initiative to repeal state Senate Bill 42, the national popular vote law, has been approved for the 2020 ballot, the Secretary of State's Office announced Thursday.
Senate Bill 42 would pledge the state's nine presidential electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote rather than to the winner of the state's popular vote for president.
Opponents have claimed that such a move would dilute Colorado's vote, particularly for rural communities, and see it as a challenge to President Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College vote in 2016 but lost the popular contest by some 3 million votes.
After the 2012 election, Trump called for doing away with the Electoral College, calling it "a disaster for a democracy … a total sham and a travesty." He reiterated his views in a November 2016 interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" in his first interview as president-elect, stating he wouldn't change his opinion just because he won.
The national popular vote is an interstate agreement among states to grant electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes. The agreement would go live once enough states have adopted the measure to add up to 270 electoral college votes, the number required to declare a winner in a presidential election.
At least 12 states, including Colorado, and the District of Columbia have already approved the agreement, with a total to date of 170 electoral votes.
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