Republicans, Democrats, and Independents-including former Republican Representative and independent presidential candidate John Anderson-joined together on February 23, 2006, at a news conference in Washington, D.C. to call for the national popular election of the President. They offered a novel approach which is politically practical because it relies on the constitutional power given to states to appoint their respective presidential electors.

The announcement marked the launch of efforts to introduce and enact bills in the 50 State Legislatures that would award the states' electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins, a Democrat, and cosponsor Senator Kirk W. Dillard, a Republican, have introduced a bill (SB2724) in the Illinois State Legislature providing for the State to join the proposed compact.

The novel approach is an interstate compact entitled the "Agreement among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote." The proposed compact would not become effective in any state until it is enacted by states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral votes (270 of the 538 votes). The compact takes advantage of the provision in section 1 of Article II of the United States Constitution stipulating: "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress…"

The proposed compact would not change any State's internal procedures for conducting or counting its presidential vote. After the ballots cast on election day are counted in each State, the popular vote counts from the 50 states and the District of Columbia would be added together to obtain a national grant total for each presidential slate.

Specifically, the proposed compact would require each party state to award all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who received the largest number of popular votes in the national election. Because the compact would become effective only when its member states collectively possess a majority of the electoral votes, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in the nation would be guaranteed sufficient electoral votes in the Electoral College to be elected to the Presidency.

Membership in the compact is not required for the popular votes of a state to count as every state's popular vote is included in the nationwide total on an equal footing regardless of whether the state is a member of the compact.

A book-Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote (Los Altos, California: National Popular Vote Press, 2006) was released at the news conference. The coauthors of the book are John R. Koza, Barry Fadem, Mark Grueskin, Michael S. Mandell, Robert Richie, and Joseph F. Zimmerman. The book is available on-line at www.NationalPopularVote.com and may be downloaded free of charge. National Popular Vote Incorporated is a 501©(4) nonprofit corporation.