In both 2000 and 2016, the democrats won the national popular vote but lost the electoral college. In response democrats on the state level have passed the national popular vote interstate compact.
it states that their states electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner of the election, not the winner of the statewide election. Currently 18 states + DC have signed onto the compact, making up 222 EVs total. It doesn’t go into effect until enough state governments have signed onto it totaling 270+ EVs, since 270 is the minimum to win a presidential election.
The states that already have it are the states you’d expect. The west coast, northern midwest, northeast states.
But democrats just won trifectas in AZ, PA, NV, MI and WI. Representing 61 EVs total. They’d need 48 more EVs to enact it.
This article implies it probably won’t’ happen. They said the D governor of NV vetoed it in the past, and MI didn’t pass it when they had a trifecta. Also even if it passes, it may not hold up in court.
I hope so. Everyone’s vote should count the same. Right now, for Presidential elections, most states’ votes don’t really matter, so the candidates don’t really go there. They don’t go to California, they don’t go to New York, etc. Those voters should have just as much influence, individually, as voters from Michigan and Georgia.
I imagine it might lead to backlash and to Democrats losing the red states they just gained. Right now, Democrats won because of many moderate Republicans having voted for them.
Of course there is nothing special about New York or Los Angeles. In fact, that’s the point. We want to strip away some votes counting for more than others if they occur in certain geographical areas. Every time anyone says “But then the people from LA and New York will decide…” they actually mean “the people will decide” but they need to spin that as a bad thing. After all, what you’re essentially saying is that allowing the people to vote - and everyone’s vote being equal - is dangerous to democracy, and while that may still defensible, it sure sounds worse laid bare.
I’m not really so sure this “some people’s votes need to count for more than other people’s votes” was ever some sort of elegant system that the founders saw as necessary to democracy. I think it was probably the necessity of getting 13 colonies, some much smaller than others, to all agree to sign up for being one nation which required buying off the smaller ones by giving them disproportionate power. It may have been a necessary compromise at the time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s some sort of universal truth that federal systems need to function.
And I disagree with you that people would ignore everyone outside of LA and New York with a popular vote. The vast majority of the country lives outside of those two areas, and their votes all matter. In fact, it’s the current electoral college system that creates battleground states and safe states that create areas that need to be campaigned for and don’t need to be campaigned for. It’s entirely possible that a popular vote would increase the areas that would need to be campaigned in.
Bingo. In 2016, 2/3 of the campaign rallies were held in six states, and 94% of campaign events were held in 12 states. Source
I am certainly not a constitutional scholar or expert, but ISTM that what the compact proposes would pass muster in court. It’s up to the individual states to determine how to allocate their EVs.
This sentence is a little unclear and potentially misleading. We only need 48 more EVs now, not 61 plus 48.
Here is an article on the NPVIC’s official website with a more complete explanation of the road map to 270, but it doesn’t take into account this week’s election.
No, it’s definitely a bug. States don’t vote; people vote. If there are more people living in California than in Wyoming, you shouldn’t make a Wyoming voter’s vote bigger to try to “balance” it. One vote in Wyoming should count exactly as much as one vote in California.
Yeah, democrats only need 48 more. My point was that even if one state like NV, AZ or WI doesn’t pass it, democrats have won enough state houses to pass it if the other states all agree to pass it. Democrats only need 4 of the 5 states to pass it which gives them a little bit of breathing room.
Right. My concern at this point is that if the plan went to the current Supreme Court, they might scuttle it forever. I don’t know how long it will take for the state’s to act and when a challenge could come before SCOTUS, but I hope it’s well after a couple present members have been replaced.
This is a very longwinded way to defend a garbage system where someone’s vote in Wyoming is worth 6 or 7 votes from States like NY & NJ.
Presidents should be elected by popular vote.
Also when the electoral college was designed, there was not a limit on number of congressmen, so they broke the electoral college when that change was made.
I think we should get rid of the electoral college. The smaller states that still want to enjoy their higher influence per capita, being “equal, but more equal” than other states will still have the Senate, which is a higher constitutional bar to change than anything else in the constitution.
Should we do it by forming a compact now? No. I see only a very small chance that this will help the Democrats. So I am against it because the GOP will not abide by it. If they didn’t have a history of doing whatever they can to thwart democracy, then it would be a worthwhile proposition.
The breakdown of scenarios I envisage where it would matter:
– The compact is invoked to give the election to the GOP. No one does anything formal to break it. Perhaps there are some die hards like Bernie bros who will never stop saying “but the Democrats could have won if they’d broken the Compact!” White house goes red.
– The compact could be invoked to give the election to the GOP. Some states whose legislatures are controlled by the Dems want to abrogate the compact. It goes to the Supreme Court which holds that the way electors are selected cannot be changed retroactively. White house goes red.
– The compact is invoked to give the election to the Democrats. Since the state has flipped, the legislature has probably also flipped, and they decide to break the compact. It goes to the Supreme Court which holds that the way electors are selected can be changed because they are selected by the legislature. White house goes red.
– The compact is invoked to give the election to the Democrats but with a legislature that somehow hasn’t flipped. This is the only scenario which might benefit the Democrats, but it would be rare. And I’m not certain that the Supreme Court would not find a way to intervene anyway. White house goes blue under this weird scenario.
In short, I see very little chance that it would benefit the Democrats and a very high chance that it would benefit the GOP. I believe in rules for everyone. Not rules for me but not for thee.
(And by “flipped” I mean previously flipped. What would be even more likely is that as soon as the state house turns, they’d withdraw from the compact.)
Once you assume a state will not follow its own laws, then politics is merely Calvinball. But what’s to stop a state now from not following its own laws?
The point of the compact is that the legal requirement for a state to split its votes is already agreed to. Once the triggering count of adopting EVs occurs. There’s no legal opt-out at that point except by a state repealing its NPVIC legislation. And which point it becomes inoperative on all the other states too.