You already said, “OK, suit yourself, it’s a compact.” So that point’s settled. It’s a compact.
Yeppers.
The issue, I think, is Virginia v. Tennessee (1893), which dealt with the border between the two states.
Based on a quick read, the Court reasoned:
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Taken at its extreme, the section would ban any agreement between two states with Congressional approval, such as an agreement to purchase property or contracting for services. (Or draining a swamp, in an example that I’m not sure I follow). This can’t be what the Constitution intends since it would burden congress and/or prevent the states from coordinating in emergencies.
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If it doesn’t mean that, then we need to consider the terms in their context (apply the cannon of Noscitur a sociis).
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Doing so, we conclude that Congressional approval is only required for “the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.”
Whether or not the NPVIC is such an agreement is where the debate would be.
For the purpose of actually discussing the point with you, my hopes of which are now dashed. Your concession is inferred and accepted.
Right next to the guns and money.
In my experience, a SCOTUS case rarely rests simply on how the current justices interpret one sentence in a 120-year-old case.
The point is that the clause has not been interpreted in a strong way for all those years. There must have been thousands of small agreements between states in since then, none of which required Congressional approval because they don’t encroach on Federal supremacy. So the question is whether NPVIC does this or not.
I understood the point; I just think it’s absurdly simplistic. If this ever comes into play, there will be dozens of lawsuits with the highest priced lawyers you can imagine. They will bring up every legal concept, new and old, that they can think of. And this is not a “small agreement”. It will have been the mother of all agreements, to borrow a phrase.
All I know is that if a state were honestly serious about this, they would independently apportion their EVs based on the popular vote winner and not need a compact for it.
Yes it would.
Why not extend your concept which you are so strongly in favor for internationally? Why dissolve the concept of states’ rights and not nations’? Try to reason through the implications of your arguments.
Sure. Chronos asked why anything was needed beyond quoting Article 1, Section 10, and RTFirefly made the argument ad spellium of writing out C-O-M-P-A-C-T. The point is just that the NPVIC, despite having compact in the name, is not necessarily a compact for the purposes of Article 1, Section 10. But then, maybe it is. Lawyers will fight it out.
I also think the idea that this compact is heading for success is also pretty simplistic, given the states that have signed on so far. Here they are, with their ratio of votes for Obama : Romney in 2012 (to keep the Trump mess out of it):
1 Maryland 62% : 36%
2 New Jersey 58% : 41%
3 Illinois 58% : 41%
4 Hawaii 71% : 28%
5 Washington 56% : 41%
6 Massachusetts 61% : 38%
7 District of Columbia 91% : 7.3%
8 Vermont 67% : 31%
9 California 60% : 37%
10 Rhode Island 63% : 35%
11 New York 63% : 35 %
That’s an average of 62% : 36% (leaving out DC because it’s an outlier and so small). Your typical state that goes for this is a ~2:1 Democrat state.
It may get CT, DE, and ME. That’s 11 more EC votes, bringing the total to 176. I’m not sure where the rest of the 94 EC votes are supposed to come from.
Dr. Strangelove: My post was in response to Falchion’s post #62.
That’s absurd. Just one state doing this, or a handful, achieves nothing and only weakens a state’s power. The whole point to the compact is that it’s all-or-nothing; it behaves as the current system until a threshold is met, and then it behaves as a true popular vote. There is never any intermediate system that’s worse than either approach.
Who was responding to Chronos’s post #55.
Yeah, but I was responding only the Falchion. His post can stand by itself. I’m just explaining my post, and why I’m not planning on arguing with you any further. 
If you aren’t taking the context of Falchion’s post into account, then you’re responding to the wrong thing. It was never claimed that SCOTUS would take that case into account, just that it established the principle that Article 1, Section 10 cannot possibly cover all agreements or compacts between states.
Incidentally, the states in which at least one state house (upper or lower) passed the compact cover 285 EVs. That’s at least a little encouraging–there is some degree of support even in places like Oklahoma. Still some work to be done, though.
Whatever. Not interested in rote contradiction.
Where did I suggest dissolving the concept of states’ rights?
As a point of order, well actually more of an emphatic rebuttal, there are more than a few democracies, civilised democracies, long standing stable civilised democracies, who don’t use a raw popular election count to determine their head of state, head of government or both.
I can name a whole hat full of less than stable, less than civilised or less than long standing democracies who do. American exceptionalism just keeps putting you unnecessarily in less than stellar company.
Would looking how most of your global peers do it be that much of a kick in the patoot?
Not necessarily.
If the margin is large and national then the influence of the smaller than average states is reduced.
But if things get tight and differentiated (which is probably closer to the norm), then if you were a red state looking at garnering blue influence (or vice versa) then offering them the chance to win some of your EC votes rather than zero even if the state splits 51:49 would have to be some incentive.
Can you name any where the loser wins?
Here are a few compacts that have been approved by Congress:
If these compacts interfere or encroach on Federal supremacy, I’m not seeing it.
Meanwhile, the NPVIC would substantially alter the power of states outside of the compact, in that their electoral votes (which are guaranteed by the Constitution) would be rendered irrelevant. Every American would cast a vote for President, but it is really only the electoral votes of a fraction of the of states that would actually determine the winner in every subsequent election. Why? To make sure that a candidate who would have won the electoral vote but lose the popular vote does not become president.
I think the very substantial alteration of power among the states warrants congressional approval, regardless of the findings in that particular case you cited.
Again, this whole discussion is predicated upon the assumption made by the losers in each of the four presidential contests where the elected President received less than a plurality of the votes (ignoring 1824, where six states didn’t even have voting), that there is something inherently “wrong” with that type of outcome. The main argument offered for this assertion is an inherently emotional one: it doesn’t feel like real democracy when this happens.
IF you truly feel this is the case, then you really should put your money (so to speak) where your mouth is. If California has 55% of its individual votes cast for Candidate A, and 44% for Candidate B (with the other 1% cast for third-party and/or write-in candidates), and you truly believe in the idea that voters should not be disenfranchised in the national result simply for being on the wrong side locally, then you should be in favor of apportioning California’s electoral votes on a close to 55% to 45% basis. If you don’t want to do that, then your desire to have EVERYONE join in a compact to do it means you are simply searching for a way that your guy can win under circumstances similar to 2000 and 2016.
Now here’s the real trouble with the proposal: what does the mass of states in the “compact” do when either a state, or an elector, becomes faithless, and ignores the requirements of the “compact”? What enforcement mechanism do you propose will apply? I foresee very little that could be done in that instance to enforce the purported compact.