But even if it’s Congress directing the manner, it’s still supposed to be the District appointing them. Congress making rules for how elections are held clearly meets that requirement. Congress just declaring who the electors are going to be, though, I don’t think does.
My apologies; I misread what you wrote. That’d be more workable, though it still faces the problem that no candidate has any electoral votes until the electoral college meets, which is of necessity after the electors are chosen: Our system was designed under the (incorrect) assumption that electors, once chosen, would be “voting their conscience”. You might be able to write around that, but it’d be a kludge.
The popular vote thing is a hypothetical; the current statehood bill would just elect not to provide for any appointment of electors. But states are in fact required to submit the popular vote to the federal government after the election. Here is Ohio’s submission (PDF), for example, which notes that “Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence electors received 3,154,834 votes” among other things (including three votes for a presidential candidate named “R19 Boddie”).
If the law was going to be changed to base it on the popular vote, I would imagine it would work something like this: The National Archivist would be required to total up those numbers from the 51 certificates, submit them to whatever officer is the chief administrator of the rump capital district (which would presumably be a minor duty attached to some other office, like the Secretary of the Interior), and require that person to issue certificates of election to the appropriate slate of elector candidates.
Like I said, it’s a debate. A Constitutional amendment would certainly be the cleanest way to do it. If Democrats were somehow able to push through legislation admitting DC as a state, there would be any number of questions around a legal challenge. Who has standing to bring suit? Is it justiciable?
You know who might have the best legal standing to opposes such legislation? Maryland. The Constitution says that you can’t create a state from another state without that state’s consent. Maryland could argue that they ceded that land to be the federal district, and never agreed to its territory being used to create another state.
In any event, my point is that the 23rd Amendment presents unique difficulties for DC statehood. Those difficulties can certainly be overcome, but aren’t even present for any other territories, including Puerto Rico.
Maybe we should just give AS to Samoa and be done with it. I don’t think it does the US any good to hold on to it.
As far as the DC amendment thing, you’d think an amendment to repeal the 23rd would have no trouble being quickly ratified, even in today’s political climate. But that may be too optimistic a view.