Colorado Gov. To Sign Bill Giving State’s 9 Electoral College Votes To Winner Of National Popular Vote

A bill that would award Colorado’s nine Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote during the 2020 election has passed both statehouses and is headed to Democratic Governor Jared Polis’s desk for a signature.

The National Popular Vote bill passed the House Thursday morning by a vote of 34-29, according to the Denver Channel. Gov. Jared Polis (D) is expected to sign the bill.

Once signed into law, Colorado would join the ranks of 11 additional states and the District of Columbia as part of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

The compact is an agreement between the states parties to award their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who obtains the largest national vote total across all 50 states and D.C.

The bill would only go into effect if the states that join the pact have Electoral College votes that total 270, the total required to win the White House.

Colorado’s nine electoral votes would bring the pact’s current total to 172 votes.

“This bill has the potential to help Americans believe that their vote matters whether you’re a rural, urban or suburban voter — through this bill every vote counts equally,” Rep. Emily Sirota (D), one of the bill’s sponsors, told the Denver Channel.

While Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election by nearly 3 million votes, she lost the Electoral College vote to President Trump. Trump won 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.

State Rep. Lori Saine (R), an opponent of the bill, argued that support for the bill and the overall pact would likely whither should Trump win the popular vote in the 2020 election.

“I think we would see a lot of defections, and that’s hardly fair,” Saine said, according to The Denver Post.

“The other 38 states are completely ignored by presidential campaigns,” Colorado Senate sponsor Mike Foote told Denver 7. “Our president should be elected because the president appeals to the majority of the voters here in the United States. Not just the majority of voters in the 12 battleground states.”