From the Associated Press:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - If John R. Koza gets his way, American voters will never again have to wonder about the workings of the Electoral College and why it decides who sits in the White House.

Koza is behind a push to have states circumvent the odd political math of the Electoral College and ensure that the presidency always goes to the winner of the popular vote.

Basically, states would promise to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most support nationwide, regardless of who carries each particular state.

"We're just coming along and saying, 'Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?'" said Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc. "I think that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the office."

The proposal is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but George W. Bush put together enough victories in key states to win a majority in the Electoral College and capture the White House.

So far, Maryland and New Jersey have signed up for the plan. Legislation that would include Illinois is on the governor's desk. But dozens more states would have to join before the plan could take effect.

It shouldn't take more than fourth-grade math for anyone to see that this really means the participating states are giving up their votes to the rest of the country, which may seem "noble" but is more accurately described as "stupid." They're lowering the power of their own votes in a misguided belief that other people will decide correctly for them.

If the governor of Illinois signs this giant pile of fuckwaddery, I have some suggestions for the next steps they can take along the same path:

• Awarding the Illinois governor's office to the candidate from whichever party wins the most gubernatorial elections in the other 49 states.

• Determining the leadership of the legislature, like the Speaker of the Illinois House and the President Pro Tempore of the state Senate, by adding up which parties control the majority of similar houses in other bicameral states.

• Holding statewide elections for all municipal-level offices, so voters in Chicago can use their wisdom to choose the mayor of Urbana, and vice-versa.

• Enacting legislation to require all Illinois-residing voters in the AP, ESPN, and Harris football and basketball polls to cast their votes for whatever team everyone else says should be #1, and continuing down the rankings in order.

• Contracting with FOX to make sure that all American Idol votes from Illinois are separated and then recast for whoever got the most votes from the rest of the country.

It is to their eternal discredit that Democrats see the huge gaping logical hole in plans to force big blue states like California to allocate their electoral votes proportionally, while big red states aren't even considering the same plan, but think that having smaller blue states give their votes to "the national vote winner" is somehow a good idea. You're surrendering your voice in the presidential election!

You don't even have to go back that far to see what this would have done. In 2004, the race "came down to" Ohio because it was one of the last big states to report results. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win. Before Ohio reported its 20 electoral votes, the tally was 252 for John Kerry, and 266 for George W. Bush.

If this law had been in effect in Maryland, Illinois, and New Jersey in November 2004, then before Ohio reported its results, the tally would have been 206 for John Kerry, and 312 for George W. Bush. (Try it for yourself here.) Despite Bush's narrow popular election victory, this law would have handed him 48 additional electoral college votes and removed as many from John Kerry, for a swing of 96 votes out of 270 necessary to win, with nothing else changing.

If people are bound and determined to not appear to understand math to remain "cool" and "average," can the Democrats at least get a grip on the fact that all of these initiatives are happening in blue states? They're handing 100 electoral college votes to John McCain in November because he can win Texas, Florida, and Georgia. This is a bad, bad, bad idea for Democrats, on top of being a truly reprehensible idea for the voters in the states who passed the law, because they just surrendered their votes to other states.

And people wonder why things sneak up on them.