If John Koza would have had his way eight years ago, Al Gore would be president.

The consulting professor of electrical engineering hopes to circumvent the complexities of the Electoral College and guarantee that the next commander in chief will be elected by popular vote instead.

The National Popular Vote bill, drafted in 2006 and endorsed by The New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Sacramento Bee, would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most votes out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. States that sign onto the bill promise to award the entire share of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide, regardless of which candidate carries that state.

“When the bill is enacted in a group of states possessing 270 or more electoral votes [enough to elect a president],” said Koza in an email to The Daily, “all of the electoral votes from those states would be awarded, as a bloc, to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and D.C.”

In less than two years, the National Popular Vote bill has been enacted into law in Maryland and New Jersey and is on the governor’s desk in Illinois. The bill has passed 14 legislative houses, and 801 state legislators currently endorse the bill.

Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc., believes that by standardizing the way states award their electoral votes, the bill will give every voter equal influence and keep candidates from ignoring some states in favor of key battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida.

“Under the winner-take-all rule, candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign or worry about the concerns of voters of states that they cannot possibly win or lose,” Koza said. “This means that voters in two-thirds of the states are effectively disenfranchised in presidential elections because candidates concentrate their attention on a small handful of ‘battleground’ states.”

In 2004, candidates concentrated over two-thirds of their money in five states, over 80 percent in nine states and over 99 percent in 16 states, according to Koza.

Despite growing national momentum, some political science scholars are skeptical about the proposal’s future success.

“As much as I would prefer seeing the president chosen by a direct national popular vote and do away with the Electoral College entirely, I am very doubtful about this proposal,” said Political Science and History Prof. Jack Rakove. “Because it involves a fundamental change in the constitutional system, it really should be done by Article V amendment, rather than through a gimmick.”

Rakove noted that there are serious constitutional obstacles that would hinder this proposal’s adoption by an interstate compact.

“Under the Constitution, such compacts require the approval of Congress. I understand that proponents can point to a line of cases in which the Supreme Court has allowed some compacts to be exempted from that requirement, but if challenged, as this one is likely to be, I find it hard to believe that such precedents would cover this case — again, because it implicates a core constitutional procedure, not akin to, say regulating a watershed or whatever.”

Laurel Harbridge, a doctoral candidate in political science, said that the proposal has more problems than it has merits.

“It alters the strategy of candidates, in effect making fewer states the focus of candidates and thus less competitive,” she said. “Under the current system small and medium-sized states get candidate attention, particularly if they are competitive like Ohio. Under the national plan, candidates could win elections by just focusing on a few large states.”

“The implications of this for the types of candidates that are elected and the policies they pursue will depend on whether the large, populous states are representative of the rest of the country,” she added. “My guess is that they are not.”

Students and faculty agree that in order to have an impact, a large number of states would need to sign on to the proposal. However, they acknowledge that political reality might make this difficult.

“There is a major collective action problem,” said Neil Malhotra, a political science doctoral candidate. “All states need to move together to adopt the system. If only one state does it, then it reduces the independent power of that state.”

Rakove agreed.

“One has to wonder about the likelihood of states defecting from any agreement based on partisan considerations,” he said, “so there are genuine concerns as to how stable such a compact — even if forged and not successfully challenged — would be.”