Hey folks, welcome to the Man of Steel podcast. Yes, I'm Michael Steele in the chair. You can find us on Apple Podcasts,

Dittr, Tune in or wherever you get your podcasts on. Look folks, you guys have been sort of following the trend lines.

We've got a lot of Democrats jumping into the political ring announcing their bid to be president Cory Booker being the latest, the senator from from Joyzie.

And he joins Kamala Harris and a bunch of others. And so it's really calling to mind the electoral process again. Yes, we're just a few months away from last November's vote.

But it tells us that no matter what we do in public life beneath the surface is always about the franchise. There's always an opportunity to improve the process of voting, to give greater access to the ballot box.

And this is going to be more and more a point of conversation as this presidential cycle unfolds. And I can't think of anyone better to help us have this conversation and to be smart about what our real options are to bringing the franchise to every voter and giving everyone an opportunity to fully participate particularly in voting for president.

Then our guest today, Dr. John Cosa, who is the lead author of the book, Every Vote Equal, a state-based plan for electing the president by national popular vote.

And he is the originator of the national popular vote legislation that has sprung up around the country.

For full disclosure, I work with Dr. Cosa in this effort. I'm proud of this association because I think it is important to give everyone access to the ballot box and to figure out smart ways to do that.

And Dr. Cosa, it is a real pleasure to have you hanging out with the man of steel today, my friend.

Good, my mother right now.

Set it up for us to help us understand what the national popular vote is and why it matters.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me.

There are a number of states that we can talk about a little bit later in the Mexico, Colorado, just recently acted on this in their state legislatures.

What are we talking about here when you consider our current system with the quote, battleground states, which tend to be the 12 to 18 states that are perennially in play at presidential elections, and the impact that it has on the other states out there in terms of their electoral process?

What is the national popular vote in a state compact and how does that change the dynamic for voting and for president?

Well, right now, when you're running for president, the states give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most popular votes inside each particular state.

So if a state is more than 4 or 5% Democratic or 4 or 5% Republican, the candidates aren't going to campaign in that state because they're either going to get those electoral votes for sure or they're going to lose them for sure.

And the result is they campaign only in the states that are very closely divided within a couple of percentage points.

There's usually about a dozen of those states, the so-called battleground states, and the entire presidential campaign gets focused into those states.

So the states you're familiar with from previous campaigns, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,

and New Hampshire, and almost all the campaign events and almost all the campaign spending, the campaign offices, are focused on winning those closely divided states.

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