With their new trifectas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, Democrats could sign onto the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states give their electoral votes to whoever wins the nationwide popular vote. All five of those states haven’t yet signed; the 19 that have possess 222 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. The additional states would activate the Compact. Some states might decline, bellyaching over losing their place of prominence in picking the president, but that would be irritatingly myopic: of the five presidents who won while losing the popular vote, four were Republicans.
Talk about historic.
This would be cool and should do it before '28, but it would probably get held up in courts. Another thing to do is increase the number Reps. Offer ranked choice voting. Make fair districts in all states decided by bipartisan groups and campaign finance reform like MT’s voters passed*. Things that improve elections for We The People, and less annoying bs ads should be supported by everyone. All but the wealthy owners who want to keep their massive benefits over the majority, and too many destitute folks support that and dig their own holes deeper, but can choose to stop.
*Montana Initiative I-194, prohibits artificial persons, including corporations and nonprofits, from contributing to political campaigns and parties.
Poooor folk? Havin’ a say in what goes on in this gah-rate country??? Heavens to BETSY!!! (Let’s hope that Civil War, boundary line shiftin’, relic goes the way of button hooks.)
Could? Sure.
Would? Absolutely not.
Jeffries and shumer would never allow it. I’d be surprised if they would allow citizens united repeal to pass or banning Congress from holding stocks to pass.
Tbf, the title is talking about the interstate popular vote compact, which is state legislation to assign electoral college votes according to the popular vote result, if the signatories have a collective majority of them. So technically this isn’t landing on Schumer or Jefferies’ desk at any point.
But yes to your point on Citizens united repeal and stock bans and just cautiously optimistic that Jeffries/Schumer will allow anything to change.
My state already does this but it would be nice if the whole country did it.
Ah, thanks for clarifying
Just fix permanent apportionment.
Rural states have the Senate as their check.
This is mixing up two related but distinct ideas.
The electoral college system leads to a winner-take-all for the electoral votes of any given state, with the exception of Nebraska. Passing a Wyoming rule or something similar to expand the size of the House, and increasing the number of electoral votes from 538 to 900 or whatever won’t change that basic dynamic.
Yeah, yeah, Wyoming has a house seat elected by a population of 590,000, a little bit smaller than the national average house district population of 780,000, but that’s not nearly as big of a source of voting power discrepancy compared to the existence of the Senate, or the winner-take-all phenomenon that happens in the Electoral College.
So yes, I agree that the Apportionment Act needs to be repealed/modified, but don’t agree it should be as high a priority as electoral college reform.
The electoral college is quite literally based on the apportionment of Congress.
The average congressional seat accounts for 760k people.
In 1930 (first Congress after this was law), the average was 280k.
Even using Wyoming as a basis (590k/rep), that would give California ~71 electoral votes (69 house seats) if there was equal representation. And this would also drastically improve the balance of power in the House.
So my contention is that even without fixing the electoral college as a concept, we can fix it with appropriate apportionment.
The electoral college is quite literally based on the apportionment of Congress.
Yes, but the disproportionality between electoral votes per voter comes more from the existence of the Senate than it does with the slightly different population sizes of the House districts. Wyoming has almost 4 times the electoral votes per voter than Ohio, whereas right now the widest ratio in House district populations is Delaware’s 980k having 80% higher population compared to Montana’s 542k.
And the genuine unfairness of the electoral college is the winner take all nature of it. Even if the electoral college itself were divided exactly proportionally to the population of the states, there would still be divergence between the national popular vote and the electoral college winner when one candidate wins a disproportionate number of very close states. Apportionment is a separate problem from the electoral college, and both independently need to be fixed.
Just throw in mixed member proportional districts, ranked choice voting, dissolving the senate, getting rid of citizens united, codifying party politics, and outlawing shareholder primacy.
Or both. We should do both.
The Electoral College needs to be thrown into a waffle house and made to eat crispy bacon. Anything but deciding president
Request to join the Electrical College if that happens
Is this supposed to be a punishment? Waffle House and crispy bacon are both great
The human body can only consume a certain amount of fried pig’s butt. I’m sure that at some point it would become torturous to continue.
Oh, please please please please!
If we want to continue to hold the branches when the subprotozoa start voting R again because they have the memory of goldfish, then we need to become a true democracy. The EC is not democratic. Every vote should count and be equally as important.
I’ll have faith in them when they’ve earned it, until then I’m cautiously optimistic.
This.
This had crossed my mind last night.
… it might actually be possible to unfuck this clusterfuck of a country.
I’ll believe it when I see it … over the past few decades, the US has shown potential but seldom done anything to change how their government is elected and held in power.
And between the two parties … they are just Lite-Conservatives and Ultra-Conservatives supported by those with the most money and monied interests
Eliminating the Electoral College is a nice idea but that’s like asking your elderly grandfather who can still drive his car to give up driving because he’s too old. Personally, I don’t think major change won’t start happening in the US, if it ever does, until about 20-30 years from now when all these ancient political dinosaurs have died off and newer generations of people start stepping in. America first has to shrug off the stench of 70-80 year old ghouls who want to hold to power for as long as possible.
I’ll believe it when I see it … over the past few decades, the US has shown potential but seldom done anything to change how their government is elected and held in power.
Are you trying to say that all of the work for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has done NOTHING?
The Compact has been enacted by 18 states and DC (CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, ME, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VA, VT, WA) representing 222 of the 270 necessary Electoral College votes. That certainly seems like a LOT has been done towards this over the last “few decades”.
I think you’ve done absolutely zero research on this topic, AND you didn’t bother to read the article, link, or even the synopsis the OP included at the top.
GTFO out of here with your doomer, “both sides are the same” bullshit. Because you’re clearly not discussing this in good faith.
over the past few decades, the US has shown potential but seldom done anything to change how their government is elected and held in power.
One could argue that Citizens United was a pretty major change in how the government is elected and held in power. Just not in the right direction.
The electoral college is a holdover from literally the 1700s when they used to have to deliver the votes by horseback.
And Texas… what would it take for a state to back out of this? I imagine if a state signed onto this, and their leadership changed back, it would just be a switch flip to undo it.
Its true that its tenuous, reversible.
But if it could be activated and used even once, thats one Presidential term more in line with the people, than with anything else.
Its far from perfect, but it is a useful tool, a potential step toward a new kind of politics, where the backward empty states stop having their bonus pity handicap points, and thus an outsized ability to force their ignorance on the masses.
Franklin did dare us all to try and “keep it”, and I’d say we’d be fools not to make use of every legitimate method to do so.
Its a kind of hack, a way to do essentially a Constitutional Ammendment without actually doing one, but that can also be ‘repealed’ more easily than an Ammendment.
If you can use it, and well exploit the advantage… eventually, you can reshape the system.
No guarantees, but… its an opening, an opportunity.
It would only be a viable agreement as long as 270 electoral votes remained in the hands of Democrats. Realistically the way this would play out is that the first post-compact election would be mired in legal challenges, and then by the next election at least one state would probably pull out, having lost its Dem majority, and that would be the end of it until the next blue wave. But it could possibly be a bulwark for one presidential election.
Like any other State law, it would potentially vary by State. Could be as little as a new law passing, revoking the Compact agreement. But that’s generally all that sets the rules in the first place anyway, which is why it’s relatively easy to actually reform via this method in the first place. The Electoral College system was designed to be reformed directly by the States if necessary, it just hasn’t really been changed since it’s reason for existing in the first place was helping to ensure slave states still maintained more power than their fair share (like many other concessions made 200 years ago to appease them).
There’s a minimum threshold, but that doesn’t mean other states can’t join the Compact after it’s already active to further strengthen it. Quite a few States don’t really do much leading on their own, they kind of just join the big bandwagons.
That’s what I was afraid of. The phrase “nuke the electoral college” isn’t exactly true.
Maybe these states could put it up for vote as a state amendment or something. Getting buy in from the people would make it stronger.
The current laws in most cases are the exact same, State laws governing how Electoral College electors are assigned are usually just regular laws that can be replaced at any time. That’s the entire reason why the Compact is the quickest and easiest way to fix the problem.
Worry about making it more permanent later. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. Especially when one of the political parties are specifically trying to obstruct EVERYTHING regardless of reason.
If we can get it done once, we’re much closer to making it permanent.
Exactly.
Its not the whole solution, but a step toward it.
I already know they are lying
Should have done it after Gore “lost”.
There’s a reason why the founding fathers said in the constitution that you can’t invent the internet and be a president in the same lifetime though.
Best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago. Next best time is now.
Fool me once, shame on you…
I really hope we can’t get fooled again
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
As awesome as it would be, I fear there are too many comfortable with status quo. That being said I’ll keep my fingers crossed
The Compact has been enacted by 18 states and DC (CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, ME, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OR, RI, VA, VT, WA) representing 222 of the 270 necessary Electoral College votes.
Nine of the remaining States have had bills pass the State House or Senate, but not make it all the way.
Nevada (6 votes) is annoying. On May 18, 2023, the Nevada Senate approved the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as a constitutional amendment AJR6 by a 12-9 vote. The Assembly had previously approved AJR6 by a 27-14 vote. The sponsors did not request passage by the 2025 Legislature, and therefore the amendment will not be on the statewide general election ballot in November 2026. So Nevada voters could have decided it this year, but they let it sit instead of resubmitting what had already been passed by the Assembly previously.
As crazy as it is to think about, with Texas going Blue with both a Dem Governor and a majority in the State House, there is actually a possibility of those 40 votes. A completely unthinkable scenario even a week ago.
Texas Senate will stay red, so no chance there, but there are other trifecta states that could get it to 270.
Also even if it texas DID pass that, we probably don’t want to rely on texas staying blueish forever. The ideal scenario for the compact is a decent amount above 270 so even if one state fucks up and goes all red and drops out, it still exists.
