 Hi everybody, this is Inside the Ballot Box. I'm Marcia Martin, and I have here with me Senator Mike Foote. Mike has just completed his final term in the state call of Colorado General Assembly, and he's going to be starting up his private practice now, but he is still working to keep Colorado in the National Popular Vote Compact. So we're trying to keep this short, but Mike, would you please start out by telling us a little bit about the National Popular Vote and what it really means? Yeah, I'd be happy to. And thanks a lot for having me on your show. And so what I'll do is I'll just start off with the bottom line. And so people that are watching the show can keep it in mind as we discuss some of the further details about it. But the bottom line about the National Popular Vote is this, and it's really three different things. Number one, under a National Popular Vote system for presidents, the presidential candidate that gets the most popular votes throughout the country would actually win the presidency, as opposed to what we've seen five times in our history and two times since 2000 with George W. Bush and most recently last time with Donald Trump. So the first point is the most votes wins, period. The second thing about the National Popular Vote that we put into place for presidential elections is truly enabling a one person equals one vote scenario for the presidency. And we can go into this into more detail later, but right now that's not how it works when we vote for president. There's a lot of votes that get tossed to the side. There's a lot of us don't matter, a lot of voters that don't matter. Under a National Popular Vote, one person would truly equal one vote when it comes to voting for the president. And then the third is that under a National Popular Vote, presidential candidates would need to campaign throughout the country and speak to all Americans as opposed to what they do now, which is they just focus on a few states that are competitive and they ignore the rest. And so the vast majority of Americans are not really something that enters into the equation. It's not what the presidential candidates care about. They just care about voters in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and maybe two or three other states and that's it. And that's also not including Colorado. They overlook Colorado as well at this point. So most of those wins, one person equals one vote. The presidential candidates would have to campaign throughout the country. That's what the National Popular Vote does. So I just wanted to put that out there right at the beginning. And I'm happy to go into the history about how Colorado became a member of it and what we're going to be seeing on the ballot for Proposition 113, if that's what you want me to do as well. Okay, Mike, I think because, you know, there was quite a lot of discussion when the General Assembly passed the National Popular Vote and now we have a referendum on the ballot. So if you could explain in just a little more depth what the General Assembly did and then what the referendum means. Yeah, sure, no problem. So go back a little bit in time. Back at the beginning of 2019, the legislature passed and the governor signed the agreement amongst the states for Colorado to be part of the National Popular Vote. I was one of the prime sponsors of that bill. I was the Senate sponsor of that bill. And so we got the majority vote in the Senate, majority vote in the House and then the governor signed it. And that meant that Colorado became the 15th state plus Washington DC to join the National Popular Vote. And just to give you a couple quick statistics about it, because people ask whether or not this is going to go into effect now. The answer is no, because there's not enough states that have joined it quite yet. Colorado plus 14 other states plus Washington DC have joined it. But that equals 196 electoral votes total. And you have to have 270 to win. So in order for the National Popular Vote to take effect, you have to have enough states that represent 270 electoral votes to join. So it's not going to go into effect in 2020. It has nothing to do with the 2020 election. Perhaps if enough states come on board, it could go into effect for the 2024 election. So going back to the history in Colorado, we passed the bill, the governor signed it back in the spring of 2019. And what's interesting, and I think a lot of people don't realize is that there is a provision within the Colorado Constitution. I'm not sure if it's unique to Colorado or if it's just one of those where there's only a couple states that have this, but Colorado does have this, where it's a provision in the Constitution that allows a citizen's petition for a referendum. If enough people in the state of Colorado sign on to a petition where they disagree with a law that's been passed by the legislature, then that can force the law to go on to the ballot. And that's a referendum in this case, a statewide referendum. So that's what happened in this case. The opponents of the National Popular Vote, the opponents of this concept of one person one vote, were able to raise money. They paid a bunch of signature gatherers. They had some volunteers to, and they went out and gathered enough signatures to put it on a statewide ballot. And so now it's on the ballot here coming up this fall for the November election. And the ballot measure asks the voters to whether or not they approve or affirm of what the Colorado legislature and the governor did. So the ballot language simply asks, do you, meaning do you the voter, approve of the decision of the legislature to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Agreement? Yes or no? So if you do approve of the National Popular Vote, if you do believe that one person equals one vote, and you believe that the most votes should actually win the presidency, you should be supportive of the National Popular Vote. You should be a yes on the National Popular Vote. And also a yes on Proposition 113, because that's what it's called now is Proposition 113. So it will come up for everyone to vote on coming up this November. Again, if you think the National Popular Vote was a good idea, then you should be a yes on Proposition 113. Great. Okay. So we're going to say that. I'm going to say that one more time. If you want one vote, one, yeah, I didn't say it right. One person, one vote for the presidency only and it doesn't affect how the electoral college works for anything else. It doesn't affect the Senate elections, any of that stuff. Then you should vote yes on 113. But it will not affect the 2020 election. So do you have any prognostication of how many what the next states might be or how many more states you think would are going to join the National Popular Vote before it will affect the presidential election in the future? Well, I wish I could see into the future. I mean, it's what we've so first of all to give a little history that the first state to pass the National Popular Vote Agreement was the state of Maryland back in 2006. And so since then, it's got maybe one or two additional states per year. Actually, back in 2019, it got four additional states. It was Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and Delaware all signed on to the National Popular Vote Agreement. So it ranges for anywhere between one and four states per year of states that sign on. This last year is an exception, though. And I should say 2020 is an exception because most legislative sessions were in session right when COVID hit. And so it was being considered in a number of other legislators, but COVID hit and everything shut down and people had different priorities when they came back to deal with at that point in time. So no states passed it this year. But I know it was introduced in Virginia, Minnesota, South Carolina and Georgia. And I think there might be one or two others that that it was introduced in for consideration this last year. Like I said, none passed this year because of COVID. So who knows what happens? I mean, with the election coming up, if there's all kinds of different scenarios where it could happen, but there could be a number of other states that find that it's in their best interest to actually sign on to the National Popular Vote because they want to make sure that all of their voters actually matter. They want to make sure that everyone in the state matters during a presidential election. And there's so many states that can't say that, including Colorado without a National Popular Vote. So we'll see where it goes. I guess the only thing that's predictable in politics is the unpredictable. So I couldn't tell you exactly which states will sign on, but a number have considered it. And I think we're going in the right direction. We're two-thirds of the way there to get it implemented. You have to have another 74 electoral votes. So if you have a couple bigger states sign on, that gets us a lot closer. If you have a couple smaller states sign on, that's great. But you still have quite a bit more electoral votes to go after that. Okay. This is really an informational show. I'm not saying I'm never going to take a position. I think everybody knows that I do support the National Popular Vote, but I'm not going to give a spiel here. I am, however, going to give you the last word, Mike. You know, give it your best shot as a rapper. Alrighty. To the wrap up, we haven't even talked about all the other great stuff about how it's constitutional and the history of the electoral college and all that stuff. So we can talk about that. It's a question of whether we're a 20-minute show or a 30-minute show. So go for it. Tell us the history and then I'll give you the wrap up. I can edit this a little. No, no, it's okay. I was just joking right a little bit. I imagine that after about 20 minutes, maybe the viewership starts to kind of go down like this, especially if they're listening for 10 minutes. Well, we're going to have to edit anyway. So give us your best wrap up. Well, so I'll just tell you this. I ran the National Popular Vote bill in the Senate in 2019 because I really believe in the idea of electing the president through a National Popular Vote. I think it really will reform our democracy in a very important way. I think actually the National Popular Vote is the single biggest improvement we can make to our democracy that we can do at the state level. I, along with many other people, see lots of problems with how our democracy runs now. I mean, you look at Jeremy and many other states. You look at campaign finance. Those are things that have to be handled probably at the federal level to a certain extent. But with the electoral college, it's a state function. It's specifically in the Constitution designated as a state power. The power to choose, allocate, and qualify your electors in the way the state legislature deems appropriate. So we can actually make this reform at the state level. That's why it excited me so much and I'm so glad we ultimately passed it. Because if we are to reform the way we elect our president through a National Popular Vote, we're going to see a lot of things change. First of all, we're going to see the way that presidents campaign change. Because right now they just focus on a couple of competitive states. They're then two-thirds or three-quarters of their entire budget on just a half dozen states that are competitive swing states. They don't go around to the rest of the country to talk to voters, to poll, to have any significant grassroots organization or significant advertising in most of the other parts of the country. I mean, 40 out of 50 states are completely ignored during presidential campaigns right now. And that means that voters in Colorado and 39 other states are just not an important when it comes to the presidential campaigns. So not only is that a bummer when it comes to presidential campaigns, but it's also manifested itself in the way that those presidents govern when they're elected. Because they've heard a lot from people from Florida or other competitive states. And they also know that in order to get re-elected, they have to win those same states. And so the way they govern, the way they do executive orders, the way they hand out aid, the way they award defense contracts, you can just go down the line about the immense presidential power to steer these types of things towards certain states. And those states are disproportionately benefited by the current system. I think that that leads to a lot of problems. It leads to a lot of cynicism when voters from throughout the country are ignored and left out. When voters don't think their voice actually matters when, and then they don't vote. And sometimes or if they do vote, they don't think that it really matters because their vote gets tossed aside if they're not in the majority of that state for that particular presidential election. It all leads to a system where our most powerful elected official is not really accountable to the majority of Americans and does not necessarily govern to the majority of Americans. And in those cases where the president is elected in a way where they are really the second place winner, but because of the electoral college system that we have set up now become president, they don't even have the support for the majority of Americans going into office. So it hurts their legitimacy. It leads to cynicism and it hurts their ability to govern. It makes it so they don't feel like they have to build majorities across the country in order to get approval for their policies. So really the way that we vote on our national popular vote would change a lot of things for the better and really help our democracy in many, many ways. And so I guess I'll wrap it up there and say that I hope people that are tuning in will vote yes on Proposition 113 because there are yes on the national popular vote. And we can keep this in our law and we can make sure that we have the Colorado electoral votes that are still committed to the national popular vote interstate agreement and that will really help the momentum across the rest of the country and get more states on board. So hopefully by 2024 we'll see this really big and great change to the way that we elect our president. Senator Mike Foot, I really appreciate you giving your time for this and I'm sure that you've added a lot of clarity to people's understanding of 113. You definitely added a lot of clarity to my understanding and I appreciate that too. Well good. I appreciate you having me on and I just hope that we can continue to chat and I hope people will vote yes on 113. All right. Thank you Mike. Have a good day. You too.