The California Senate has passed a bill, now awaiting approval in the Assembly, that would award all of California's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who won the popular vote in California. The law will only become effective if other states with a collective total of 270 electoral votes, pass similar legislation.

The bill apparently has been sponsored and promoted by Democrats. Why? California is a reliably Democratic state, whose electoral votes reliably go to Democratic candidates. Why would you voluntarily give away those votes to Republicans from other states?

Presumably the reason is to attract candidates to campaign in California and to prevent occurrences like the Al Gore loss in 2000. Frankly, who needs the candidates? And, the next time around it may be the Republican who wins the popular vote by a hair with the Democrat gaining the electoral college. Without the vote fraud in Ohio, that might have been the way the 2004 election would have gone.

I suppose I wouldn't mind it so much if all 50 states signed on, but as long as it's the predominantly Democratic states that are giving up their votes, I'm very dubious.