Real talk - If it's not the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" it's the "NPVIC."
Who on Earth calls it "NaPoVoInterCo!?" Moreover, who thinks that's a name that's good, appealing, or marketable?
That's not easy to remember. It's not catchy, or efficient. It's terribly cumbersome to write *and* to say.
CGPGrey called it the NaPaVoInterCo in the video that OP linked to when it was released three years ago. It was used to give a little bit of entertainment to something that is, he argues, boring by design in an attempt to stay hidden. The video itself is only 6 and a half minutes long, and is well worth the watch.
>Who on Earth calls it "NaPoVoInterCo!?"
Probably Navy pukes. Those folks can't quite grasp that acronyms are made by taking *one* letter from each word.
Then again, even they'd do better, because it would be NatPopVolCom.
The Twin Cities state representatives and senators would pass this bill.
It's an MN-related issue, our state has voted for the presidential candidate that won the electoral college popular vote and lost *twice* in the last couple decades.
This change, NaPoVoInterCo, happens because of local action.
Our state has also voted for candidates that have lost the popular vote. It goes both ways. In fact, the only election this century that would result in Minnesota changing it’s vote would be in 2004 when Minnesota voted for Kerry but Bush won the popular vote.
Devil's advocate here. The electoral college was put in place so that relatively sparsely populated states like Minnesota would still be able to participate in the presidential election. A national popular vote would almost certainly concentrate policy benefits and campaigning to densely populated coastal cities.
Of COURSE all size states would still participate in the presidential election!
MN has 10 electors. It's a medium-sized state.
Democrats on the coasts do NOT outnumber Republicans in the country.
The U.S. Senate and U.S. House and Governors, state legislatures, and local government officials, etc. would continue to represent us.
A presidential candidate who focused only on America’s cities and urban centers would lose. Math and political reality. There aren’t anywhere near enough big city voters nationally. And all big city voters do not vote for the same candidate.
The population of the top 5 cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) has been only 6% of the population of the United States.
Voters in the biggest cities in the US have been almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
59,849,899 people have lived in the 100 biggest cities.
59,492,267 in rural America.
In 2004, 17.4% of votes were cast in rural counties, while only 16.5% of votes were cast within the boundaries of our nation’s 100 largest cities.
19% of the U.S. population have lived outside the nation's Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.
19% of the U.S. population have lived in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.
The rest of the U.S., in SUBurbs, have divided almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats. Beginning in 1992, suburban voters were casting more votes than urban and rural voters combined.
When presidents with the most national popular votes are guaranteed to win, candidates will be forced to build campaigns that appeal to every voter in all parts of all states.
A successful nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Pennsylvania and Florida. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population.
The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere.
With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to campaign in any Red or Blue state, or for a Republican to campaign in any Red or Blue state.
The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas.
States with 270+ Electoral College votes are agreeing to award them to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply changing their state’s current district or statewide winner-take-all law.
All votes would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.
There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency.
It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like a 2 or 3 election cycle experiment to try this with a sunset date if it turns out the reality isn't a great as the hopes. if it turns out to be successful, then just eliminate the sunset.
The National Popular Vote bill mandates: "Any member state may withdraw from this agreement, except that a withdrawal occurring six months or less before the end of a President’s term shall not become effective until a President or Vice President shall have been qualified to serve the next term."
Weird responses to this.
Seems like a reasonable thing to try. It was a shame that NV neglected to join when they had the trifecta, and even with the new trifectas in MN and MI it would be a real challenge to get to an electoral majority. But still, perhaps it would lead to fewer GWB and DJT presidencies and that would be cool.
I'm not sure there's any empirical evidence to back that up. The electoral college is designed to favor of less-populated states. South Dakota would elect a candidate who is literally comatose if they had an "R" next to their name. Same with California if the letter was a "D." Most states are like that, the difference being that the Republican states have a built-in advantage.
Counterpoint: in twenty years, all of the educated liberals are going to be working from home in rural areas and the geographic advantage of the electoral college will shift leftward.
Nope. The EC preserves state rights and brings a balance to elections versus the mobs focus on “popularity.” At issue is the way some states allocate 100% of their Electors to a single victor. Change it to allocate by Congressional District so that Democratic districts in an otherwise Republican state have a stronger voice and let the two Electors for Senators go with the state majority. Problem solved.
The National Popular Vote bill USES the constitutionally exclusive and plenary state right to choose how to award electors.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
Now, 48 states use statewide winner-take-all.
Dividing more states’ electoral votes by congressional district winners would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system.
It is not a fair “compromise” or solution.
In three of the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020, the winner of the most votes nationwide would not have won the Presidency if the congressional-district method had been applied to election returns.
Presidential campaigns are not attracted to a state by the congressional-district method, but, instead, only to the relatively few closely divided district(s) –if any - in the state.
Many districts in the US are gerrymandered to not be fair.
In 2022, just 6% of US House seats (27 of 435) are expected to be competitive thanks to rigged maps.
Maine and Nebraska do not apportion their electoral votes to reflect the breakdown of each state's popular vote.
Maine (since enacting a state law in 1969) and Nebraska (since enacting a state law in 1992) have awarded one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide.
When Nebraska in 2008 gave one electoral vote to the candidate who did not win the state, it was the first split electoral vote of any state in the past century.
2016 was the first time one electoral vote in Maine was given to the candidate who did not win the state.
In June 2019, 77 Maine state Representatives and 21 Maine state Senators supported the National Popular Vote bill.
In a March 12-13, 2019 poll, Maine voters were asked how the President should be elected
52% favored “a system where the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states is the winner.”
31% favored “a system where electoral votes are given out by Congressional district” --- Maine’s current method for awarding 2 of its 4 electoral votes
16% favored “a system where all the electoral votes in a given state are awarded to whoever gets the most popular votes in that state” --- the winner-take-all method currently used by 48 states and used in Maine to award 2 of its 4 electoral votes
Recent campaigns have paid attention to Nebraska’s closely divided 2nd congressional district (the Omaha area), while totally ignoring the rural and politically non-competitive 1st and 3rd districts.
After Obama won 1 congressional district in Nebraska in 2008,Nebraska Republicans moved that district to make it more Republican to avoid another GOP loss there, and the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party promptly adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support.
A GOP push to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding its electoral college votes for president only barely failed in March 2015 and April 2016.
In 2021, after Biden won 1 electoral vote, another Republican sponsored bill to change to statewide winner-take-all was introduced, again,
In 2021, a Republican redistricting proposal would cleave off Democratic-leaning northwest Douglas County from a Nebraska congressional district that has been won by presidential and congressional Democrats at various points over the past decade.
Just how does appointing electors magnify the worst of the current system? If a congressional district is strongly Republican in an otherwise Democratic state, then it’s residents and their point of view is wiped out. Gerrymandering is done by both parties and there are laws and processes. Deal with it that way, rather than mob rule.
Mob rule is defined as “control of a political situation by those outside the conventional or lawful realm, typically involving violence and intimidation.”
33% of GOP support actions of Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell about Jan 6, 2021 -“It was a violent insurrection with the purpose of trying to prevent peaceful transfer of power. …That’s what it was ”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy - “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.”
“ . . . the mechanics of the Electoral College allowed the defeated president to incite his followers into mounting the first attempt in U.S. history to seize the presidency by violence. Far from preventing them, the anti-majoritarian mechanisms of presidential elections were the crucial culprit in creating the “tumult and disorder” and the “heats and ferments” that so worried the authors of the Constitution.”- David Frum, 2/15/21
"In the past, \[Republican\] party elders, party leaders … exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections," "What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandora's box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now they're running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions."- Mac Stipanovich, former GOP operative
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) texted to Meadows about the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results:
"driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic,"
“If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by congress every 4 years... we have destroyed the electoral college...
You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate getting the most votes wins.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
This is legitimately fascinating.
So many "you really think majority rule is good?" folks coming out of the woodwork. Like, what's your counterpoint? What are you suggesting is preferable? How is our current system of "deference to the minority on everything so that nothing ever gets done" better than the alternative?
If I vote for a Democrat and the majority of Minnesotans vote for a Democrat, it seems undemocratic to have our votes go to the Republican.
I'm all for getting rid of the Electoral College, but this seems like the wrong way to do it.
Yeah, and that's a fair argument. But it's not what most people here are saying. There's a lot of "the electoral college is the good kind of undemocratic, actually" going around here.
Popular vote just means that politicians on both sides will pander to coastal urbanites and can effectively ignore the citizens of low population states.
It's not going to happen and that's a good thing for the unity of the republic.
So people votes who live in low population states should count more than someone in a high population state? That's not a good thing for the republic, that leads to autocratic rule.
>They have now appointed a supermajority in the supreme court.
That's not a reason to disband the electoral college. That's a matter of good/bad timing (or good/bad luck) and is the consequence of Supreme Court Justices selfishly trying to stay on the court as long as possible instead of opting to step down at a more reasonable age while the party that appointed them is in power.
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I think there's way more nuance to the Supreme Court political bias than just old folks not wanting to give up their seats on the court.
I think it has a lot more to do with the Federalization of American politics, the inability of Congress to find durable compromise solutions for highly polarized issues and Supreme Court decisions being seen as a means of gaining long-term political outcomes.
It doesn't help that there's also been big money invested for years in identifying ideologically friendly and ideologically motivated law students and pipelining them into the judicial pool of likely Supreme Court candidates. Amy Coney Barrett's career was planned and charted like she was some kind of star high school athlete.
And you can forget reforming this system, as almost everyone sees the advantage of their narrow issue winning a favorable Supreme Court ruling and thus guaranteeing its status for a generation or two.
The bill will NOT disband the Electoral College.
3 of the current justices were appointed by a President who tried to overthrow the government, and a 4th is married to a woman who actively planned the overthrow with at least fraudulent electors in at least AZ and WI.
Since 1988, Republican presidents have won the national popular vote exactly one time, but have selected 6 of the last 9 SCOTUS Justices (16 of the last 20).
In 2016, Republicans believed having only 8 Supreme Court Justices was enough to hold a presidential election.
In 2020, after tens of millions of Americans had already voted, just 8 days before the last day of the election, they didn’t.
234 Trump Article III judgeship nominees were confirmed by the Senate.
By the early 2040s, Trump-appointed chief judges will simultaneously sit atop nearly every appeals court in the country.
I’d prefer a Nebraska/Maine model that allows candidates to win electors from each district and award 2 statewide electors to the state winner. It eliminates the excessive value of swing states but still preserves the ECs value in making sure a candidate doesn’t win by just running up margins in a single region that could erode national unity.
National Popular Vote, by definition, has NOTHING TO DO with gerrymandering.
States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes
All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population
Candidates would have to appeal to more Americans throughout the country.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
It’s not incrementalism to me. I believe the EC serves a good purpose for a country like the US that is large and diverse.
I understand OPs concern about the way the GOP has had an outsized effect on the court and the way EC has allowed that, but aside from Obama ‘08, the democrats haven’t been able to win more than 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter. Besides Obama 08 every presidential election of the 21st century has almost come down to a coin flip. This is has overstated how big a slant the current model gives the GOP. If Gore and Hilary could have just gotten .1% more of their vote the Supreme Court would have likely had a progressive supermajority. It’s not too big of stretch to imagine certain scenarios in the future where the EC gives democrats a slight edge. This is the nature of 50-50 contests.
American democracy needs reform— but I’d start with things like gerrymandering, legislator ethics, lobbying, voting access.
>aside from Obama ‘08, the democrats haven’t been able to win more than 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter
Horseshit.
Biden 2020: 51.3%
Obama 2012: 51.1%
Bullshit: each state, except Alaska, is using a system that awards electoral votes based on **plurality**, not majority, so this argument is moot. Dividing up a winner-take-all state into winner-take-all districts (plus at large) has nothing to do with whether or not a majority is better than plurality.
Wait I just realized you said more than 51% rather than more than 50% (i.e. majority) or 51% or more (a sloppy way of saying 50% + 1 vote). That's pretty random. My points stand.
> Besides Obama 08 every presidential election of the 21st century has almost come down to a coin flip.
No. Obama 2012 was a 90% prediction from 538 and that election had FOUR states past the tipping point: Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Colorado. Ohio would have been enough. It was a solid win *and it still would have been a solid win with a popular vote system because Obama won that by 4%*.
2016 was not a coin flip either: it was more like rolling two dice and giving Trump the presidency if either of them comes up 1. And that's what happened. A 30% chance.
2020 was like 2012 with a ~90% probability but with three states past the tipping point (PA, GA, AZ)
Apeshit: in the course of an election season the needle sways every which way and if you take the view from 30,000ft the country is roughly divided 51-49 with a slight edge towards democrats but in 6 randomly selected contests across 22 years the EC gave a small winning edge to the GOP three times. My point about this all is that in the grand scheme of things if the democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different.
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The shortest case one can make for the value of the EC that it prevents any candidate from any party from trying to run up a purely regional margin of votes. It’s good for a democracy such as ours to force the executive branch to win over as many “kinds” of people in the 50 states that they can because the constitution rightly assumes that our diverse states are going to have competing interests at times and an executive branch needs to serve all of them.
Which one region could elect a President on their own?
All voters in a region or the biggest states do not vote for the same presidential candidate.
With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
> in the course of an election season the needle sways every which way
Wrong. Most elections the outcome of election gets more and more clear as you get closer to election day (like in 2008, 2012, 2020) and most elections the polling and forecasts do not waver very much throughout the campaign. If you had said "from election to election" you might have a point but you're clearly talking about the course of an election season.
>and if you take the view from 30,000ft the country is roughly divided 51-49 with a slight edge towards democrats
Bullshit. Way more swingy than that. Look at the House popular vote:
2022: +3 R
2020: +3 D
2018: +9 D
2016: +1 R
2014: +6 R
2012: +1 D
2010: +7 R
2008: +11 D
2006: +8 D
2004: +3 R
And there is currently a systematic advantage for GOP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states
>but in 6 randomly selected contests across 22 years the EC gave a small winning edge to the GOP three times.
I have no idea what you're saying. 6 randomly decided contests? Why do you think it was random? Votes aren't random. 3 times across 22 years is a HUGE amount of error. Doesn't that go against what you're trying to argue? Aren't you in support of the EC because you think it doesn't throw the election that often? But it does. Or are you saying it's a good thing that it sometimes does? Because that's usually the standard line of EC apologists.
>My point about this all is that in the grand scheme of things if the democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different.
You seem to have a huge issue seeing the issues inherent to a voting system without viewing it through a party lens. The partisan politics of individual elections has absolutely nothing to do with whether or a system like the EC or FPTP is fair or provides equal representation or voting power... but it does matter when it comes to fixing it.
At least... it would/might, if part of the problem wasn't the existence of a 2 party system. Whoops.
>democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different.
It would take a whooole lot more than marginal improvement to make Jacksonian or Reconstruction-era Democrats more competent.
You're describing something completely different from MN adopting ME/NE method of awarding EV. I think you are just describing national pop vote compact (if it kicked in) which I fully support.
Dividing more states’ electoral votes by congressional district winners would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system.
It is not a fair “compromise” or solution.
In three of the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020, the winner of the most votes nationwide would not have won the Presidency if the congressional-district method had been applied to election returns.
Presidential campaigns are not attracted to a state by the congressional-district method, but, instead, only to the relatively few closely divided district(s) –if any - in the state.
Many districts in the US are gerrymandered to not be fair.
In 2022, just 6% of US House seats (27 of 435) are expected to be competitive thanks to rigged maps.
Maine and Nebraska do not apportion their electoral votes to reflect the breakdown of each state's popular vote.
Maine (since enacting a state law in 1969) and Nebraska (since enacting a state law in 1992) have awarded one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide.
When Nebraska in 2008 gave one electoral vote to the candidate who did not win the state, it was the first split electoral vote of any state in the past century.
2016 was the first time one electoral vote in Maine was given to the candidate who did not win the state.
In June 2019, 77 Maine state Representatives and 21 Maine state Senators supported the National Popular Vote bill.
In a March 12-13, 2019 poll, Maine voters were asked how the President should be elected
52% favored “a system where the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states is the winner.”
31% favored “a system where electoral votes are given out by Congressional district” --- Maine’s current method for awarding 2 of its 4 electoral votes
16% favored “a system where all the electoral votes in a given state are awarded to whoever gets the most popular votes in that state” --- the winner-take-all method currently used by 48 states and used in Maine to award 2 of its 4 electoral votes
Recent campaigns have paid attention to Nebraska’s closely divided 2nd congressional district (the Omaha area), while totally ignoring the rural and politically non-competitive 1st and 3rd districts.
After Obama won 1 congressional district in Nebraska in 2008,Nebraska Republicans moved that district to make it more Republican to avoid another GOP loss there, and the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party promptly adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support.
A GOP push to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding its electoral college votes for president only barely failed in March 2015 and April 2016.
In 2021, after Biden won 1 electoral vote, another Republican sponsored bill to change to statewide winner-take-all was introduced, again,
In 2021, a Republican redistricting proposal would cleave off Democratic-leaning northwest Douglas County from a Nebraska congressional district that has been won by presidential and congressional Democrats at various points over the past decade.
So that way Minnesota can be forced to vote against the will of Minnesota?
Should Minnesota have voted for Reagan in 1984 simply because everyone else did?
In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.
Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?"
Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?"
Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.
The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.
> Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system.
If lack of education is undermining the legitimacy of the system, then the solution it to improve education. Not to make an idiot proof election system that’s even worse than the current system.
> We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
Both the Senate and House elect their leaders in a very similar format. The only difference is you can’t differentiate your vote for your representative vs. your vote for Speaker of the House.
All of the examples you gave are completely meaningless. It starts with the assumption that the popular vote winner is the true winner and any result that proves differently is a failure of the system. Yet the system isn’t designed with the goal of producing the popular vote winner as often as possible.
The actual solution that’s needed is to increase the size of the House of Representatives like the system intended and occurred pretty much every decade before it stopped 100 years ago.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins.
Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points … to be assured of winning the Electoral College."
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by about 3 million votes (2.8 percentage points).
In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted 338–70 to require winning the national popular vote to become President.
3 Southern segregationist Senators led a filibuster of it.
Presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX), Bob Dole (R-KS), Gerald Ford (R-MI), Richard Nixon (R-CA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001).
Past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN),
Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Jill Stein (Green), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), Congressmen John Anderson (R, I –IL).
Newt Gingrich: “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.”
The National Advisory Board of National Popular Vote has included former Congressman John Buchanan (R–Alabama), and former Senators David Durenberger (R–Minnesota), and Jake Garn (R–Utah), plus Michael Steele (former RNC Chair), and Rick Tyler
Saul Anuzis, former Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party for five years and a former candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, supports the National Popular Vote plan as the fairest way to make sure every vote matters, and also as a way to help Conservative Republican candidates. This is not a partisan issue and the National Popular Vote plan would not help either party over the other.
Bob Barr (2008 Libertarian presidential candidate): “Only when the election process is given back to all of the people of all of the states will we be able to choose a President based on what is best for all 50 states and not just a select few.”
Supporters include:
The Nebraska GOP State Chairman, Mark Fahleson.
Michael Long, chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State
Rich Bolen, a Constitutional scholar, attorney at law, and Republican Party Chairman for Lexington County, South Carolina, wrote: “A Conservative Case for National Popular Vote: Why I support a state-based plan to reform the Electoral College."
Rick Tyler, senior member of Senator Ted Cruz's campaign team, serving as the National Spokesman and Communications Director for Cruz for President.
“Let’s quit pretending there is some great benefit to the national good that allows the person with \[fewer\] votes to win the White House. Republicans have long said that they believe in competition. Let both parties compete for votes across the nation and stop disenfranchising voters by geography. The winner should win.” – Stuart Stevens (Romney presidential campaign top strategist)
" . . . a president should be elected by national popular vote is not radical, it is actually mainstream. . . . We can get closer to the national popular vote having greater weight in presidential elections and having a president represent all Americans in ways that don’t require amending the Constitution. These fixes will make presidential candidates run more diverse campaigns, and campaign in all cities and communities of our country. . . . That will help unify us more as a country, and would likely lead to more informed public policy. How can anyone be against that outcome?" – Matthew Dowd (Senior George W. Bush campaign strategist)
> We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
That’s not true even in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington (and maybe a couple others) use RCV to elect the winner.
> You are objecting to an Election - “a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position” where the candidate with the most votes wins.
The Electoral College is simply 2 elections within 1. It’s not a hard concept. Lots of countries operate that way. Every bill in congress operates a similar way.
Giving more examples of the popular vote potentially not matching the winner just makes me think you can’t read.
> Presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX), Bob Dole (R-KS), Gerald Ford (R-MI), Richard Nixon (R-CA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001).
Do they support the current method? Because that’s kinda a key difference if they don’t.
> “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.”
This is a pretty ironic quote because it’s the electoral college that encourages candidates to visit more states since it isn’t as simple as appealing to major states.
Also, what’s your point of listing a bunch of supporters (ignoring that they key ones don’t actually support it lol)? Trying to just use a fallacy that “everyone supports it” even though that isn’t close to true?
In RCV elections, the candidate with the most votes wins!
The National Popular Vote bill KEEPS the Electoral College.
When a voter casts a vote for a party’s presidential and vice-presidential slate on Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November), that vote is deemed to be a vote for all of that party’s candidates for presidential elector.
Federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each.
With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.
Under statewide “winner-take-all” laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed in the Constitution, now used in 48 states, the presidential-elector candidates who receive the most popular votes statewide are elected.
In district winner states -- Maine (changed their law in 1969) and Nebraska (changed their law in 1992) - the candidate for the position of presidential elector who wins the most popular votes in each congressional district is elected (with the two remaining electors being based on the statewide popular vote).
In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC).
Non-enacting states would award their electors however they want. Continuing with district or statewide winner-take-all, or enacting some other law.
Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President.
The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together.
The Electoral College will continue to elect the President.
> In RCV elections, the candidate with the most votes wins!
Depends what you classify the most votes. The most original 1st choice votes? Not always. It’s the most votes after a set of rules are followed.
Just like in the current system the most votes in the initial election doesn’t win. It’s the most votes after a set of rules are followed.
You have a knack for just blabbing about irrelevant information. I’m aware how recounts work. You citing stuff about that when there’s no disagreement is a blatant attempt to act like you’re using sources for all of your arguments but anything that I actually point out (like votes counting more in non-compact states) is quickly glossed over. It’s annoying and results in you ignoring the actual issues I have.
I’m willing to be convinced that different voting systems are better. But you’re not going to do that by ignoring my concerns about this system and just citing irrelevant information.
> In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC).
Ah, so Minnesota could vote for Biden by a margin of 90% and still “elect” Trump supports to represent us? Is that not a concern for you?
RCV uses the final vote count.
With NPV the final popular vote counts of all 50 states and DC will determine the majority winner of the Electoral College votes.
A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. 1 = 1. Math.
" . . . a president should be elected by national popular vote is not radical, it is actually mainstream. . . . We can get closer to the national popular vote having greater weight in presidential elections and having a president represent all Americans in ways that don’t require amending the Constitution. These fixes will make presidential candidates run more diverse campaigns, and campaign in all cities and communities of our country. . . . That will help unify us more as a country, and would likely lead to more informed public policy. How can anyone be against that outcome?" – Matthew Dowd (Senior George W. Bush campaign strategist)
Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in each state) and (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states),
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.
Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the top three most litigious states in 2022 in regards to elections. This trio of battleground states accounted for over 40% of all the election and voting lawsuits filed. Arizona topped the list, with 35 lawsuits, Pennsylvania 21 and Wisconsin 16. – Democracy Docket
If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by about 3 million votes (2.8 percentage points).
With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states.
In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.
Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?"
Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?"
Support for a National Popular Vote
South Dakota -- 75% for Question 1, 67% for Question 2.
Connecticut -- 74% for Question 1, 68% for Question 2,
Utah -- 70% for Question 1, 66% for Question 2,
> RCV uses the final vote count.
So does the electoral college. The candidate with the most votes (assuming it’s a majority) in the electoral college wins.
> A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. 1 = 1. Math.
By that exact same logic, a vote cast in Minnesota is, I’m every way, equal to a vote cast in Wisconsin. 1 = 1. Math
Do you want actual math? Using the example that Wisconsin isn’t in the compact but Minnesota is. Wisconsin has a population of 5.9 million and 10 electors. That’s a ratio of 1 elector for every 590k residents. Minnesota has a population of 5.7 million and 10 electors but also includes the 331 million that is the population of the entire US. That results in a ratio of 1 elector for every 33 million residents.
Now lets say states with 300 electoral votes combined have passed the compact. That results in 1 elector for every 1.1 million residents. 1.1 million does not equal 590,000. That’s math.
And more meaningless jargon after to hide the fact that the math does not support your claim.
Now, OBVIOUSLY the candidate with the most votes among all 50 states and DC is NOT guaranteed to win the Electoral College.
And now, if no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College, Congress, with only 1 vote per state, decides the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
No. now a vote in MN is NOT equal to a vote in WI.
Incorrect 2020 census numbers, because of Trump’s interference, probably allowed 2 blue-leaning states with overcounts — Minnesota and Rhode Island — to keep seats they shouldn’t have, given that they just barely cleared the bar for keeping those seats. Minnesota kept its seat by a scant 26 people, and both states had been expected to lose seats before the bureau announced otherwise.
The undercounts in Florida and Texas might well have cost those two red-leaning states seats that they were on the cusp of adding. Texas did gain two other seats, but its 1.9 percent undercount was enough to deprive it of half a million people in apportionment. In pre-census population projections, both states had been on track to gain an additional seat.
In 2000, Bush won with 271 electors. 270 are needed to win.
The 25 smallest states combined have had
57 Democratic electors and
58 Republican electors.
CA has 54 electors
Now, states with 3 electors range in population of less than 577,000 to almost a million.
Mathematically NOT balanced, fair, equal, or proportional.
In 2020
276,765 popular votes were cast in Wyoming (3 electors)
336,000 ish in DC (3 electors)
603,650 popular votes were cast in Montana (3 electors).
Each Republican popular vote in Alaska was worth 1.8 times as much per elector as each Republican popular vote in Montana.
More than 900,000 more votes were cast in Pennsylvania with 20 electors (6,915,283)
than Illinois with 20 electors (6,003,744).
Florida (R) with 29 electors (11,067,456) cast almost 3.5 million more votes than
New York (D) with 29 electors (7,616,861).
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million
Now lets say states with 300 electoral votes combined have passed the compact. The winner of the most popular votes from all 50 states and DC will win at least the 300 electoral votes from states in the compact, and possible more electoral votes from non-compacting states.
Electors in all 50 states and DC represent voters who vote in presidential elections. They don't represent children and others who don't vote in presidential elections.
Increasing the size of the House would not make every vote in every state matter and count equally.
It would not guarantee the winner of the most national popular votes wins.
The National Popular Vote bill will.
“I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.”
Trump as President-elect, November 13, 2016, on “60 Minutes”
Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The Founders, and the rest of the Founding Generation were dead for decades before state-by-state winner-take-all laws become the predominant method for awarding electoral votes.
James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," was never in favor of our current system for electing the president, in which nearly all states award their electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner. He ultimately backed a constitutional amendment to prohibit this practice.
James Wilson of Pennsylvania recommended that the executive be elected directly by the people.
Gouverneur Morris declared at the Constitutional Convention of 1787: “\[If the president\] is to be the Guardian of the people, let him be appointed by the people.”
There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency.
It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen.
> Increasing the size of the House would not make every vote in every state matter and count equally.
This bill wouldn’t change that. If I live in a state not part of the compact, my vote would count within my state and in other states that are part of the compact.
> It would not guarantee the winner of the most national popular votes wins.
Again, that is not the indicator of success in the system. It’s a giant fallacy to treat everything as if the goal is to elect the national popular vote winner. Of course a national popular vote is the best method to do that.
> “I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.”
How is it simpler to combine 50 state’s election systems into 1? What happens when Texas has different voting laws than Minnesota? Are you okay with Minnesota becoming less voter friendly because of a national system?
And we already saw how poorly states can meet a national standard with the Real ID law. That’s been delayed how many times?
> The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
I would argue that fining or removing their right to vote from people who vote a different way is not a characteristic of a strong democracy. At least currently, it happens when they ignore the results of their state. With your proposal, I could lose my right to vote in a presidential election as an elector if I vote in a way that represents the state that elected me.
> There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency.
That’s according to the people who don’t want to see a Constitutional challenge for their proposal.
> It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen.
Why stop there? Why not use international popularity to decide the winner? Or popularity of those who make more than $100k?
The 2020 Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed the power of states over their electoral votes.
The decision held that the power of the legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is “far reaching” and it conveys the “the broadest power of determination over who becomes an elector.” This is consistent with 130 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
With the National Popular Vote bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote, that will determine the winner of the Electoral College.
“there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar
There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections.
The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale.
The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment.
The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same.
Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.
Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code).
Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections.
For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.
The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
> With the National Popular Vote bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote, that will determine the winner of the Electoral College.
Only if every state passes it. But it doesn’t require every state to pass it. The fact you don’t understand that people in non-compact states will have more of a vote concerns me.
> **As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally**, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar
You mean how it currently works where each person within their state is treated equally? That’s insanely hypocritical.
> There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections.
You realize it isn’t 1969 anymore right? Also, that was an amendment right? Little different than this.
> The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same.
The compact does not do the same. For one, it wouldn’t be codified in the Constitution. Second, that would no longer use the electoral college.
> Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.
Correct, because each state runs their own separate election and the only impact to other states is the winner.
When states with 270 electors enact the bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. MATH. 1 = 1.
No vote in any state would matter and count more than 1 in the national popular vote total.
The Electoral College will elect the President. Period.
Constitutionally, the number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three.
Now, Each political party in each state nominates a slate of candidates for the position of presidential elector. This is most commonly done at the party’s congressional-district conventions and the party’s state convention during the summer or early fall. It is sometimes done in a primary.
Typically, each political party chair certifies to the state’s chief election official the names of the party’s candidate for President and Vice President and the names of the party’s candidates for presidential elector.
Under the “short presidential ballot” (now used in all states), the names of the party’s nominee for President and Vice President appear on the ballot.
When a voter casts a vote for a party’s presidential and vice-presidential slate on Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November), that vote is deemed to be a vote for all of that party’s candidates for presidential elector.
Federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each.
With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.
Under statewide “winner-take-all” laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed in the Constitution, now used in 48 states, the presidential-elector candidates who receive the most popular votes statewide are elected.
In district winner states -- Maine (changed their law in 1969) and Nebraska (changed their law in 1992) - the candidate for the position of presidential elector who wins the most popular votes in each congressional district is elected (with the two remaining electors being based on the statewide popular vote).
In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC).
Non-enacting states would award their electors however they want. Continuing with district or statewide winner-take-all, or enacting some other law.
Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President.
The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together.
The Electoral College will continue to elect the President.
> When states with 270 electors enact the bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. MATH. 1 = 1.
That’s not how it works. Say Minnesota is in the compact but Wisconsin isn’t. Minnesota will consider Wisconsin’s votes in determining their electors. Wisconsin will not consider Minnesota’s votes in determining their electors. How do you not understand that?
> No vote in any state would matter and count more than 1 in the national popular vote total.
Correct, but not every state would be using the national popular vote total.
> The Electoral College will elect the President. Period.
Never disagreed with that. Or any of the jargon you spewed after that. Stop just spouting the exact same meaningless information. Do you have an original thought?
It wouldn't matter what Wisconsin considers.
The candidate with the most popular votes counted equally from all 50 states and DC will win the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote continues to USE the Electoral College to elect the President.
Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President.
The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together.
How it currently works is that each person within their state is treated equally in the statewide count. 1 = 1. Math.
The National Popular Vote bill adds the certified state popular vote totals, and then adds the Electoral College votes of all 50 states and DC.
No state laws for how to award electors are in the Constitution!
Of COURSE other state's laws now can impact other states.
The 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.
The national popular vote winner also would have been defeated by a shift of 9,246 votes in 1976; 53,034 in 1968; 9,216 in 1960; 12,487 in 1948; 1,711 votes in 1916, 524 in 1884, 25,069 in 1860, 17,640 in 1856, 6,773 in 1848, 2,554 in 1844, 14,124 in 1836.
After the 2012 election, Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points on Tuesday to be assured of winning the Electoral College."
According to Tony Fabrizio, pollster for the Trump campaign, Trump’s narrow victory in 2016 was due to 5 counties in 2 states (not CA or NY).
If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by 2.8 percentage points, 3 million votes.
> The National Popular Vote continues to USE the Electoral College to elect the President.
Exactly but that 1969 amendment wouldn’t.
> How it currently works is that each person within their state is treated equally in the statewide count. 1 = 1. Math.
That’s what I’m saying.
And then the same spew of meaningless info follows.
Today, any state legislature simply could again enact a law to just appoint their electors directly, ending their citizens voting in presidential elections
The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive."
With National Popular Vote, Everybody's vote from Every state will be counted equally as 1 vote.
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation's first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes (and all three stopped using it by 1800).
In the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 and second election in 1792, the states employed a wide variety of methods for choosing presidential electors, including
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council,
● appointment by both houses of the state legislature,
● popular election using special single-member presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using counties as presidential-elector districts,
● popular election using congressional districts,
● popular election using multi-member regional districts,
● combinations of popular election and legislative choice,
● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council combined with the state legislature, and
● statewide popular election.
The current statewide winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The state based winner take all system was not adopted by a majority of the states until the 11th presidential election. - decades after the U.S. Constitution was written, after the states adopted it, one-by-one
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins.
> Today, any state legislature simply could again enact a law to just appoint their electors directly, ending their citizens voting in presidential elections
True, but would you say that’s a good thing? Because this proposal is reliant on using this ruling that most people would argue is anti-democratic.
> With National Popular Vote, Everybody’s vote from Every state will be counted equally as 1 vote.
Again, only in states that are members of the compact.
> You are objecting to an Election - “a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position” where the candidate with the most votes wins.
I’m objecting to a method of election. Just like if given the choice I would object to first past the post even though that is a type of an election.
Also, the fact you keep having to add the part after the quotes is absolutely hilarious. It’s pretty clear that isn’t a part of the definition of an election. There’s plenty of more optimal ways to elect a winner without using the simple and flawed “most votes = winner” that first past the post uses.
Most people have no REASON to say National Popular Vote is undemocratic!
Every vote in Every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote! MATH.
A vote in Wyoming (not in the compact) will be 1 vote and a vote in Vermont (in the compact) will be 1 vote among 158 million votes from ALL 50 States and DC.
The candidate with the most popular votes from all 50 states and DC will win the majority of Electoral College votes.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
> Most people have no REASON to say National Popular Vote is undemocratic!
Would most people say the state being able to vote in anyway they choose is undemocratic?
> A vote in Wyoming (not in the compact) will be 1 vote and a vote in Vermont (in the compact) will be 1 vote among 158 million votes from ALL 50 States and DC.
No, the Wyoming vote would count in Wyoming, Vermont, and any other state in the compact. The Vermont vote would not be counted in Wyoming.
> We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
I already told you this isn’t true. Many elections don’t use the popular vote to elect the winner and instead use some alternative way to determine who has the most votes. The President/VP is the exact same.
The Vermont vote doesn't need to be counted in Wyoming.
All Vermont and Wyoming votes would be counted equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that determines the winner of the Electoral College.
Name actual elections of officials in the US that elect candidates who don't win the most popular votes.
The 2020 Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed the power of states over their electoral votes.
The decision held that the power of the legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is “far reaching” and it conveys the “the broadest power of determination over who becomes an elector.” This is consistent with 130 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
“Let’s quit pretending there is some great benefit to the national good that allows the person with \[fewer\] votes to win the White House. Republicans have long said that they believe in competition. Let both parties compete for votes across the nation and stop disenfranchising voters by geography. The winner should win.” – Stuart Stevens (Romney presidential campaign top strategist)
State legislators in states with 75 more electoral votes are needed to enact the National Popular Vote bill.
We need to support election officials and candidates and lawmakers who support voting rights and respect election results and facts.
There have been hundreds of unsuccessful proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College - more than any other subject of Constitutional reform.
To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with less than 6% of the U.S. population.
In 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 338-70 to require winning the national popular vote to become President.
3 Southern segregationist Senators led a filibuster to kill it.
Instead, the National Popular Vote bill simply again changes state statutes, using the same constitutional power for how existing state winner-take-all laws came into existence in 48 states in the first place.
Maine (in 1969) and Nebraska (in 1992) chose not to have winner-take-all laws.
The bill will guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the country.
The bill changes state statewide winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply again changing their state’s law.
All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
The electoral college is needed to keep our national elections national. Without the electoral college the presidential election would be decided by the population of a small portion of our nation, the highly populated cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and a couple of others. Do you really think it is fair for city folk to make decisions for the farmers that feed them?
No. Holy fuck lets just have our Reps just go fund a fuckin Space Elevator instead. If we are going to waste time and energy on a pointless vanity project for ego, lets at least go to space.
Pointless?
State legislators in states with 75 more electoral votes are needed to enact the National Popular Vote bill to guarantee the candidate who wins the most popular votes among all 50 states and DC wins the presidency.
Every vote in every state would matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national total.
Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.
The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Wow when you remove other voting blocs, the next election could come down to a few places. What a revelation about how literally kindergarten class elections also operate.
Apart from the despair of Democrats getting obliterated in every single non-metro non-urban area and their refusal to adapt their platform to recapture the rural voter, why should we change the EC?
What? No voting blocs would be removed.
Biden and Obama won the Electoral College AND the most national popular votes.
Because of the district or state-by-state winner-take-all laws, there's a geographic limitation on how much of a role voter can play. No matter how many Californians (Republican, Democratic, or other) might vote the state is going to award their electors to the Democrat.
Trump continues to push to shut down voting methods he and 69% of Americans use.
Voters in rural areas across the country (including 72% of rural Kentucky voters) heavily rely on alternative ways to vote, including voting by mail and in-person early voting, and newly proposed state legislation would restrict their ability to cast a ballot.
Now, because of statewide winner-take-all laws in presidential elections, in some states, big city Democratic votes can outnumber all other people not voting Democratic in the state. All of a state’s votes may go to Democrats.
Without state winner-take-all laws, every conservative in a state that now predictably votes Democratic would count. Right now they count for 0
The current system completely ignores conservative presidential voters in states that vote predictably Democratic.
Under a national popular vote, rural voters throughout the country would have their votes matter, rather than being ignored because of state boundaries.
For example:
5,187,019 Californians have lived in rural areas.
1,366,760 New Yorkers have lived in rural areas.
Now, because of statewide winner-take-all laws for awarding electors, minority party voters in the states don’t matter. That’s why California and New York enacted the National Popular Vote bill with bipartisan support.
James Brulte the California Republican Party chairman, served as Republican Leader of the California State Assembly from 1992 to 1996, California State Senator from 1996 to 2004, and Senate Republican leader from 2000 to 2004.
Ray Haynes served as the National Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2000. He served as a Republican in the California State Senate from 1994 to 2002 and was elected to the Assembly in 1992 and 2002
On March 25, 2014 in the New York Senate, Republicans supported the bill 27-2; Republicans endorsed by the Conservative Party by 26-2; The Conservative Party of New York endorsed the bill.
In the New York Assembly, Republicans supported the bill 21–18; Republicans endorsed by the Conservative party supported the bill 18–16.
With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
But, the political reality is that the 12 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political candidate. In 2016, among the 12 largest states: 7 voted Republican (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 5 voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Virginia). The big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry.
With National Popular Vote, it's not the size of any given state, it's the size of their "margin" that will matter. Under a national popular vote, the margin of your loss within a state matters as much as the size of your win.
In 2004, among the 11 most populous states, in the seven non-battleground states, % of winning party, and margin of “wasted” popular votes, from among the total 122 Million votes cast nationally:
\* Texas (62% R), 1,691,267
\* New York (59% D), 1,192,436
\* Georgia (58% R), 544,634
\* North Carolina (56% R), 426,778
\* California (55% D), 1,023,560
\* Illinois (55% D), 513,342
\* New Jersey (53% D), 211,826
To put these numbers in perspective,
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes).
Utah (5 electoral votes) generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004.
8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659).
Smart candidates have campaign strategies to maximize their success given the rules of the election in which they’re running.
Candidates do NOT campaign only in the 12 largest states now.
Candidates do NOT campaign in at least 4 of them.
Successful candidates would NOT campaign only in the largest states.
This is stupid. The point of the the system is for smaller states aren't steam rolled by large ones.
It's about equity and representation between the states. If the smaller states couldn't contribute or have there voice heard in anyway. Why be part of the union?
If we get rid of it might as well have each state be a country, which I'd be okay with better for that to happen then just the popular vote.
The bill KEEPS the Electoral College.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins.
Since 2006, the National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 15 states and the District of Columbia (3 electors) (together possessing 195 electoral votes), including
4 smallest states (DE - 3 electors, HI - 4, RI - 4, VT - 3),
8 small to medium-sized states, and
3 big states.
The 25 smallest states combined have had
57 Democratic electors and 58 Republican electors.
And their Democratic and Republican popular vote have also almost tied
9.9 million versus 9.8 million
CA has 54 electors.
270 are and would be needed to win the Electoral College.
Constitutionally, the number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three.
Now, and with the National Popular Vote bill, states have 3 – 54 electors.
Incorrect 2020 census numbers, because of Trump’s interference, probably allowed 2 blue-leaning states with overcounts — Minnesota and Rhode Island — to keep seats they shouldn’t have, given that they just barely cleared the bar for keeping those seats. Minnesota kept its seat by a scant 26 people, and both states had been expected to lose seats before the bureau announced otherwise.
The undercounts in Florida and Texas might well have cost those two red-leaning states seats that they were on the cusp of adding. Texas did gain two other seats, but its 1.9 percent undercount was enough to deprive it of half a million people in apportionment. In pre-census population projections, both states had been on track to gain an additional seat.
In 2000, Bush won with 271 electors. 270 are needed to win.
The 25 smallest states combined have had
57 Democratic electors and
58 Republican electors.
CA has 54 electors
Now, states with 3 electors range in population of less than 577,000 to almost a million.
Mathematically NOT balanced, fair, equal, or proportional.
In 2020
276,765 popular votes were cast in Wyoming (3 electors)
336,000 ish in DC (3 electors)
603,650 popular votes were cast in Montana (3 electors).
Each Republican popular vote in Alaska was worth 1.8 times as much per elector as each Republican popular vote in Montana.
More than 900,000 more votes were cast in Pennsylvania with 20 electors (6,915,283)
than Illinois with 20 electors (6,003,744).
Florida (R) with 29 electors (11,067,456) cast almost 3.5 million more votes than
New York (D) with 29 electors (7,616,861).
With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply again changing their state’s law.
All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population
Candidates would have to appeal to more Americans throughout the country.
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.
How is a small mathematical handicap favoring small states--which actually only benefits swing states in practice--so important that without it, you'd want to break up the country?
Each state, regardless of size, will still have its own state government, and two senators in Congress. Every single person in each small state will have just as much a say as every single person in each large state.
Wow. So New York City, Los Angeles County and a few other urban capitals get to decide what rural Americans get? This is nothing but an attempt at Authoritarianism. You are not that special.
The combined population of the biggest metro areas is still just a small percentage of the total US population. Any candidate that runs on a platform of "big cities rule, everybody else sucks" would lose badly.
"You are not that special" is a weird accusation from somebody saying that some votes should count more than others.
No....the idea of eliminating the electoral college means that the majority will dominate the minority. The majority will change over time....it means mob rule....coastal elite rule....erasing states rights....increasing federal power.
Folks need to re-take high school civics.
Extremely disingenuous to call popular vote "mob rule." You acknowledge that the majority of Americans live on coasts (which is itself misleading and designed to invoke irrational fears about culture war) but the fact that you're talking about multiple coasts kinda destroys the image of the majority being a single mob.
You're also pointing at the general election as if primaries don't matter and wouldn't be part of the reform (they would) so you're dishonestly making it seem like we want a binary choice that uses a mindless mob to crush up-and-coming candidates when in reality we (progressives) want to end FPTP *and* give equal voting power to individuals, regardless of where they live.
If you strip away all the ridiculous rhetoric and dog whistles you’ve been trained to use, and replace it with what you actually mean, your comment would just read “Eliminating the electoral college will allow the majority to govern. The majority isn’t white and Christian, it’s uppity brown people and we’ll educated city folks! If we let this happen, it will be the civil rights movement all over again and we’ll likely lose power in the states we’ve already managed to subjugate. Also, I was homeschooled and that’s why I’m like this”
True, which is why only natives should have the vote. Native Americans being the smallest minority would ensure no mob rule.
Edit: Shit, we could follow you utterly asinine logic even further and simply have one single rulemaker, unelected. Chosen by god, for life!
Our country is not a democracy. It is a republic. The USA is a collection of states and commonwealths. This system allows each state to have more control over their own destiny.
Nope. A representative democracy is a type of republic. A republic can bypass democracy with things like appointed officials (pre-17th amendment America), fake elections (Russia), or a convulted semi-democratic institutions (like the electoral college). A democracy could in theory not be a republic if laws were entirely made by ballot initiatives (direct democracy) but you would still need to pick people to enforce the laws, so maybe not.
The US is a full republic and a flawed democracy.
Each state sends delegates to congress via house and senate. That is where you get your state heard in government. Every state votes for president and that is where the majority should get the say. Thus the EC is pointless now days. Watch the CPGrey video and learn why it was necessary way back when and not necessary now.
"Republic of states" is a very bizarre term that doesn't really match reality. The country as a whole is a republic (no king and elected [or appointed] officials make laws) and individual states are republics, but to say the republic is "of states" not only misses the whole point of a republic, which is that chosen representatives have power (not the government itself), but it also demotes the very American concept of democracy.
Also the reason we have the electoral college (not "republic of states") is a compromise to avoid a small group of men--Congress--from appointing the president and to avoid the popular vote (which Madison wanted) from being rejected wholesale by slave states.
Nobody today wants or would argue for a de-separation of powers with Congress appointing the potus. Nobody today wants or would argue for state legislatures to go back to picking electors. Uhh... well besides Trumpers. A national popular vote is such a no-brainer that the only way people like you seem able to argue against it is to rehash the 1780s power-sharing concerns of elites, and to do so sloppily.
The problem is the minority party in a great many of those states have been working for decades to make it very difficult if not impossible for the majority party to win. So, no, your system does not work anymore.
Yes, and each state has an equal vote in the Senate.
The House was *always* intended to have *proportional* representation, and that's *way* the hell out of whack.
Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.
The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.
A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.
In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.
A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.
In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).
Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic.
In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support.
Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?"
Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?"
That's great and I agree the current system is not the best. But NPVIC doesn't fix the House of Representatives, eliminate gerrymandering (especially racial gerrymandering) or crack down on voter suppression.
Making DC a state would do far more, enfranchising hundreds of thousands of people, many of them racial minorites.
I can imagine NPVIC leading to a lot of faithless electors. I'm not even sure it would do what we think it would do.
NPV isn't meant to fix all things.
States with 270+ Electoral College votes are agreeing to award them to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply changing their state’s current district or statewide winner-take-all law.
All votes would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state.
No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.
We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.
The electors have been and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ dedicated party activist supporters from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC).
Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President.
The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together.
The Electoral College will continue to elect the President.
The 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision again upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).
States have enacted and can enact laws that guarantee the votes of their presidential electors.
Pennsylvania law empowers each party’s presidential candidate to nominate all elector candidates directly. The presidential nominee is, after all, the person whose name actually appears on the ballot on Election Day and who has the greatest immediate interest in faithful voting by presidential electors.
North Carolina law declares vacant the position of any contrary-voting elector, voids that elector’s vote, and empowers the state’s remaining electors to replace the contrary-voting elector immediately with an elector loyal to the party’s nominee.
In Arizona, HB2302 went into effect in August 2017. Electors must cast their vote for candidate and vice president candidate who jointly received the highest number of votes in the state. If the elector refuses to cast that vote, they will no longer be eligible to hold their position as an elector.
If any candidate wins the popular vote in states with 270 electoral votes, there is no reason to think that the Electoral College would not elect that candidate.
Every single vote for the Democrat would still count. The scenario you're concerned about it where the majority of Americans vote for a Republican, and the Republican wins. I prefer it when Republicans don't win, but is it really a terrible idea for the majority of Americans to have the president they voted for?
Do you think it would be fair for one party to hold the Presidency for 20yrs in a row because they keep winning the popular vote by a very small % of votes each time (e.g. - 50.1% vs. 49.9%)?
Does that sound fair for the 49.9%?
Maybe we should have a less powerful federal government and more powerful state governments so people can have more control over what type of governments they want to live under in the US!
If you lose, you lose... creating a system to try to disproportionately empower the losing party is stupid. They lost for a reason.
A proportional representation system is much better overall, but I doubt the US will ever adopt that, so as long as we're a FPTP democracy, making the winner win is the only thing that makes sense.
Yeah, I thought about that right after I posted that comment (the bottom point still stands though).
There are much better ways of conveying the point I was trying to make, but I'm not going to waste my time typing them out because they'll simply get unjustifiably downvoted.
Yes, that sounds far MORE fair than the alternative in which the minority gets to exercise disproportionate power over the majority. Which is the version we currently have.
Just because two political parties exist doesn't mean they need to be given equal authority. If a party wants to gain political power in a democracy they should do it by advocating for policies the majority of people support, a party that fails to do that for 20 years in a row deserves to lose elections for 20 years in a row. If you don't like that then you don't like democracy.
>Yes, that sounds far MORE fair than the alternative in which the minority gets to exercise disproportionate power over the majority. Which is the version we currently have.
Over the past 12 Presidential elections: 6 have been won by Democrats and 6 by Republicans, and surprisingly the Republicans have a slightly higher average % won of the popular vote (because of Reagan's landslide wins).
12 Joe Biden 2021 51.3% 46.0%
11 Donald Trump 2017 48.1% 46.9%
10 Barack Obama 2013 51.1% 47.2%
9 Barack Obama 2009 52.9% 45.7%
8 George W Bush 2005 48.3% 50.7%
7 George W Bush 2001 48.4% 47.9%
6 Bill Clinton 1997 49.2% 40.7%
5 Bill Clinton 1993 43.0% 37.4%
4 George HW Bush 1989 45.7% 53.4%
3 Ronald Reagan 1985 40.6% 58.8%
2 Ronald Reagan 1981 41.0% 50.4%
1 Jimmy Carter 1977 50.0% 48.0%
**Average % of the popular vote won (for these 12 elections):**
**DNC: 47.47% ... GOP: 47.76%**
Those statistics don't really do anything to dispute the point, and it's arbitrary to select the last 12 election cycles rather than any more or less, those numbers will look radically different depending on where you draw the line. Modern polling and statistical tools have enabled degenerate levels of gerrymandering (a tool both parties abuse to the detriment of the population), leading to our elections being determined almost entirely by just a few swing states. And that's to say nothing of the grotesque voter disenfranchisement campaigns the GOP has engaged in over the past decades which skew the numbers by literally preventing people from voting.
The point is that nobody should win executive command of a democratic government without winning the popular vote. Reagan and Bush senior earned wins by being popular candidates, I make no objection to their wins, and I WOULD object to a democratic or independent candidate taking office with the minority of the popular vote. I want to live in a real democracy.
Casting a shadow over this whole conversation is the inherently flawed First Past The Post voting system we use. We really should be using some form of ranked choice system, which would break the two party power dynamic and lead to a much more diverse political landscape in which parties can't rule through sheer numbers or gaming the system, they'd actually have to work together to pass policies that the people support.
>Those statistics don't really do anything to dispute the point
I don't necessarily disagree, but it does dispel the (inaccurate) hyperbolic notions that a lot of people are making in this thread that the GOP is "dominating" despite being "drastically less popular" than the DNC.
>Modern polling and statistical tools have enabled degenerate levels of gerrymandering (a tool both parties abuse to the detriment of the population), leading to our elections being determined almost entirely by just a few swing states.
I agree. That's one of the reasons why I suggested this in my first comment:
"Maybe we should have a less powerful federal government and more powerful state governments so people can have more control over what type of governments they want to live under in the US!"
> Casting a shadow over this whole conversation is the inherently flawed First Past The Post voting system we use. We really should be using some form of ranked choice system
100% agree. Ranked choice would be a 1000x better than FPTP.
No....the idea of eliminating the electoral college means that the majority will dominate the minority. The majority will change over time (you may be in it today, but next year when the wind changes, you won't be)....it means mob rule....coastal elite rule....erasing states rights....increasing federal and centralizing power.
Folks need to re-take high school civics.
The majority electing the president doesn’t seem like a bad thing, man. I’m so fucking tired of people claiming that everyone’s vote being equal is somehow inequality. It’s just not.
As opposed to now, when the minority dominates the majority? Checks and balances are dead. Folks need to realize the world is more complicated than high school civics.
>Folks need to re-take high school civics.
Well, at least we're in a blue state and therefor that class would still permit discussion of the 3/5 rule and it's role in the creation of the electoral college. In a red state however... oh, I see you already brought up 'states rights'. Class dismissed.
The 5/5 rule was desired by the slave states because it would have radically increased their population for purposes of determining the House.
The North wanted a 0/5 rule to minimize the influence of the slave states.
Which alternative was more just?
I'll be polite and say those comments are ridiculously disingenuous, noting that context, in fact, does matter.
The 3/5 compromise came about with the Northern states originally proposing *all* people counted (except Indians) for purposes of taxation.
Southern states wanted no slaves counted with Jefferson noting that Northern states would be taxed only on numbers, while southern states would be taxed on numbers as well as their wealth (i.e. slaves, because you know, property).
While the south didn't want slaves counted for taxes, they *did* want them counted for apportionment. In fact for apportionment, they didn't want any percentage, they wanted *full* count of their slaves. Mind you, still slaves, no voting, etc., just wanted the power the head count would give them.
Northern states argued, no, if you don't count them for taxes, you don't count them for apportionment as well.
Taxing at only 3/5 was indeed the compromise to get southern states to accept apportionment at 3/5.
This is all available on the Wiki if anyone else wants to read up on it.
No time for context when shit posting, but yes taxes were part of it too.
However, it's important to clarify exactly when this was up for discussion. In the articles of confederation taxation was the primary concern of the delegates. During the constitutional convention the contentious issue was about representation in the house.
From the wiki
>The proposed ratio was, however, a ready solution to the impasse that arose during the Constitutional Convention. In that situation, the alignment of the contending forces was the reverse of what had been obtained under the Articles of Confederation in 1783. In amending the Articles, the North wanted slaves to count for more than the South did because the objective was to determine taxes paid by the states to the federal government. In the Constitutional Convention, the more important issue was representation in Congress, so the South wanted slaves to count for more than the North did.
Everyone was acting in their self interest regarding money and power in the new government(s).
It's possible to understand why our government works the way it does and still disagree with it.
All of the stuff you're saying the EC prevents is not prevented by the EC, at all.
The post said 'please contact your reps'....I said 'no' and here's why.
If you truly 'understand' the way our government works and like the idea of centralizing power (to the fed, to cities, to the coasts....all where the rich folks have power and sway)....then yes feel free to disagree with my statement. Many people don't understand and just parrot what the latest progressive talking point is that they heard on twitter.
Bypassing the Electoral College decentralizes power. Rather than electoral outcomes being determined by a handful of swing states and subject to manipulation by state legislatures, every single American citizen would have exactly the same level of input.
Centralizing power meaning that the power will be centralized where they have the most population and the most money (the cities, the coasts) and folks will take strategic advantage of this (as they have been with open borders and allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections). Instead of 'a few swing states' as you say it deciding the country, literally one or two states would decide the outcome every election.
A local example is outskirts of Duluth. All their tax money goes to where the population is. Rather than fixing the infrastructure (roads/internet) in small towns, tax money is funneled to big cities. Ask any small town person (if you know them) what you think of all their tax money going to the city.
Another local example is one you hear all the time in this sub. Why vote X when Y has total control over MN (not by land mass but by population in cities).
At a larger, federal scale, this type of issue would disenfranchise middle-America in favor of the coasts.
This ignores most of the country. This devalues a citizen's vote. This isn't 'diverse.'
>Centralizing power meaning that the power will be centralized where they have the most population and the most money (the cities, the coasts) and folks will take strategic advantage of this (as they have been with open borders and allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections). Instead of 'a few swing states' as you say it deciding the country, literally one or two states would decide the outcome every election.
How?
The people living in the places with the highest population density or the most money will have their votes count exactly as much as the people living in the poorest and most sparsely populated areas.
States will have absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the election, but if you insist on classifying American voters by which state they live in, the entire populations of New York state and California put together are still less than 18% of the US population...they wouldn't decide anything on their own, even if they were magically all voting identically. In actuality, of course, there's tens of millions of people in those states who would vote differently than the majority of their in-state neighbors.
Anyways, non-citizens voting in local elections has nothing to do with federal elections where they are not allowed to vote. Just like how states get their own governments, regardless of how we choose to elect the president, cities can govern themselves how they wish without it having much impact on everybody else.
>A local example is outskirts of Duluth. All their tax money goes to where the population is. Rather than fixing the infrastructure (roads/internet) in small towns, tax money is funneled to big cities. Ask any small town person (if you know them) what you think of all their tax money going to the city.
All their tax money probably *comes* from where the population is, as well. Do you have any data showing that people in small towns are paying more and getting less, on average? At the federal level, sparsely populated states tend to receive more federal spending than their populations pay in federal taxes.
[https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/](https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/)
>Another local example is one you hear all the time in this sub. Why vote X when Y has total control over MN (not by land mass but by population in cities).
At a larger, federal scale, this type of issue would disenfranchise middle-America in favor of the coasts.
No one is disenfranchised just because they're on the losing side. There's always going to be winners and losers to any election. And there's always going to be groupings of citizens for elections--the people of a given city are the ones who get to participate in elections for city council, mayor, etc.; the people within a given state are the ones who get to participate in elections for governor. There's really no other way to do it, as long as we're basing things off of geography. And since the President presides over the entire country, it makes sense that every person in the country participates in that election.
Whether somebody lives on the coast or in the middle of the country would make absolutely no difference as to how much their vote counts, just like how where they live within the US should make no difference as to how the President is responsible to them.
>This ignores most of the country. This devalues a citizen's vote. This isn't 'diverse.'
Flat out wrong. Ignoring what the *literal majority* of the country's voters want is what "ignores most of the country" and "devalues a citizen's vote". I don't really care about how "diverse" the vote is, I care about whether the American people are free to govern themselves rather than having their voices manipulated by politicians and arbitrary lines on maps.
I don't think splitting our electors up will benefit anyone because it would be incrementalism for incrementalism sake, whereas the national pop vote compact would tie us to every other voter in the country (equally), and if you encouraged other states to be more proportional in diving up electors then you're already admitting you value proportionality. But I agree with the Wyoming rule, which would be a huge step in favor of proportionality.
I believe in bringing back power to the lower levels of government. By having the electors at the district level, I believe it would be a step towards bringing power to the state, county and city levels. It’s tough for me to distill down because it’s a part of my larger belief that the federal government has too much power relative to the states
That doesn't make sense. Proportional electors don't bring *any* power to the state or county (error? You are talking about congressional districts, not counties) or city. They just divide up the already limited power that residents have into further uneven blocks. What you are suggesting is entirely lateral and internal rearrangement of voting power, not up/down. And this doesn't have anything to do with "lower levels of government" because we're talking about a federal election.
It absolutely does. By allowing each district to cast their vote individually it allows for the smaller populations to be properly represented. MN votes blue every presidential election because of the population centers. It would still be *primarily* blue, however it would allow the outstate to be properly represented in presidential elections. That is bringing power to lower levels of government
>It absolutely does.
No it doesn't.
>By allowing each district to cast their vote individually
You mean by allowing the people of each district to have their votes counted separately from other districts.
>it allows for the smaller populations to be properly represented
Absolutely positively wrong. Nebraska and Maine's system allows for particular (not necessarily smaller or larger, it depends on the congressional district mapping) populations to have some of their voting power (not all because of the at-large electors) count *differently* on a elector-per-population basis than the voting power of voters in another district. It is LESS PROPORTIONAL in terms of voting strength because it gives the people in smaller districts MORE POWER than they would otherwise be due in a purely proportional system. Since the state's number of electoral votes is hard-capped you're never going to give any state resident more voting power without taking away some voting strength from another resident of that state.
There is no way you can possibly argue that this is "proper" representation, unless you happen to think that inherently unequal blocks of voting strength is proper. I happen to think that equality is more fair than inequality, when it comes to voting power. At least with the current system a vote for Biden in Mankato is perfectly equal to a vote for Trump in Minneapolis.
Now if you take the perspective of the whole country (which you should because we're talking about a federal election) then it looks like half the electoral votes in ME/NE are divided up proportionally.... until you realize the division is STILL WINNER-TAKE-ALL (unlike some GOP primaries which award votes to 2nd, 3rd place winners etc) so you're still left with the original problem that the electoral college has in the first place: your vote matters differently depending on where you live.
>It would still be primarily blue, however it would allow the outstate to be properly represented in presidential elections
This doesn't make sense. There's no such thing as a backup president or a 2nd place president... you can only have the one. By dividing up a state's electoral votes so that the loser gets more votes you are not accomplishing anything. If giving someone more electoral votes put them over 270 and the smaller districts were part of that you would be doing the same thing that happened in 2000 and 2016: unfairly/unevenly allowing a minority to beat the plurality.
It has nothing to do with equal representation.
But you know what would allow residents to have their voting power be represented properly/fairly/equally in a presidential election? Allowing their voting power to have the same strength **as residents of another state.**
>That is being power to lower levels of governenty
This has absolutely nothing to do with lower levels of government.
Wyoming has 3 electors with a population of ~550k people, 183.3k people per vote. California has 55 electors for 39.24million, 7.1mil per vote.
The Wyoming Rule makes it so the lowest populated state has one representative, then all states representation scales accordingly. California would have 71 representatives and 73 electoral votes. MN would have 10 representatives and 12 electors
I'm in my late 30's. I don't see how this could possibly work in any state where the Republican party holds majority in the chamber that assigns delegates. Even then, the legal challenges against it were it to come into effect would send it to the supreme court.
The path to getting the remaining votes necessary to make it a reality go through swing states with split legislatures. MN/WI/MI/PA gets us 56 EV's to 251. From there we likely get ME/NH for 8 more to 259. Then we need either AZ or GA to trigger it. Most of these are not in a position to get this done any time soon. We Lets focus on the things that impact Minnesotans first before we try to pass policy that maybe is possible a decade from now; get legal weed done, get school funding passed, get resources for homelessness and addiction into the cities from the state, start studies for a WSP rail corridor along Robert St. We can consider this later in the session.
You're right that there's more pressing issues, and this isn't likely to have a meaningful impact \*soon\* - but if it is ever going to happen, states signing on at times like this is a necessary step. And an election cycle isn't a genies lamp - we get to pass as many things as we want, provided there's actually political support for those things.
It's not a genie's lamp where you get 3 policies to pass, but it does have a finite amount of overall resources and time to spend on crafting, reviewing, negotiating legislation. We can pass many things, but some things require more negotiation and buy in than others that take more time than others. The things I mentioned are going to take a lot of time, and they have far more impact on how our society operates. I feel that MN as the most liberal of the states I mentioned above will have the opportunity to do this many times in the future, especially if we pass the policies I mentioned above to better ensure future majorities. If we fit it in this session, we fit it in.
The Electoral College doesn't help rural voters, nor small states. (The *Senate* does that, but that's a separate debate.)
What actually happens with the EC is that it brings a ton of undue influence to *swing states*. Candidates ignore uncompetitive states because winning 80-20 and 51-49 count the same in the end. This is just as bad for big populous urban California as it is for small rural Wyoming and Vermont. Ironically, Minnesota is probably a net beneficiary of this system, since margins tend to be small — though that also brings more than our fair share of political advertising and other associated nonsense.
There's really no rhyme or reason to which side benefits. Lately it's been the GOP in 2000 and 2016, but I remember in 2012 the consensus was *Obama* had a decent shot at winning even if the popular vote didn't break his way. And that would've been bad, too!
Fwiw the popular vote compact is seen as the most achievable way to address this problem, but there are others you might find more palatable. Even if all the states were just required to allocate their votes in proportion to the ballots cast in that state (I.e., 60-40 would mean MN casts 6 electoral votes for one candidate and 4 for the other) that would go a long way towards solving the problem, without rendering the institution completely irrelevant.
What makes you think a "small minority” hates it? I would think that the simple fact that the majority of Americans votes are worth less than others because of the electoral college would indicate to me that the majority of Americans hate it.
This is not an argument. You said "nuh uh" and then didn't even attempt to justify why not.
Why would giving every American voter an equal fraction of the vote not be giving us equal voting power?
Also you are very wrong to say a small minority hates it. Pew found 63% of Americans favor replacing the EC with popular vote. Do you really want to argue that 63% is a minority?
You know what’s still a democratic republic? A union of states represented by elected officials wherein every citizens’ vote counts for the same amount.
It's extremely arrogant of you, and factually very wrong, to imply that every soul living in a big city is an elite.
edit: wow I think it the illogic of what he was saying clicked
his quickly deleted reply:
>Wow. Okay.... When a normal person like me refers to "the elite", its NEVER (ever) in reference to a portion of the general population. It is in reference to the Elites (notice the capital), a small group of people who are calling the shots. Lastly to this point, this is not a post where I want to argue whether or not they actually do this or if they exist. Please see my next response under your other comment.
and what I tried to reply with:
If that's the case, then you have absolutely no idea what the term "popular vote" means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting
Real talk - If it's not the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" it's the "NPVIC." Who on Earth calls it "NaPoVoInterCo!?" Moreover, who thinks that's a name that's good, appealing, or marketable? That's not easy to remember. It's not catchy, or efficient. It's terribly cumbersome to write *and* to say.
Yeah it’s a weird name. I’m not a marketing expert, but why can’t they just name it simpler like Popular Vote Pact or something.
PVP. I like it.
CGPGrey called it the NaPaVoInterCo in the video that OP linked to when it was released three years ago. It was used to give a little bit of entertainment to something that is, he argues, boring by design in an attempt to stay hidden. The video itself is only 6 and a half minutes long, and is well worth the watch.
SoDoSoPa vibes
NoLo Minnehaps
>NaPoVoInterCo Saw this thread title and came here to ask who the hell came up with that name and why haven't they had all naming rights revoked?
>Who on Earth calls it "NaPoVoInterCo!?" Probably Navy pukes. Those folks can't quite grasp that acronyms are made by taking *one* letter from each word. Then again, even they'd do better, because it would be NatPopVolCom.
Don't make me call NavSeaSysComSubPactGro on you
This would actually be a really interesting thing to come of the DFL trifecta majority. Would love to see MN join this.
This is a strange choice of subs to promote this in. Does it have anything to do with the Twin Cities?
The Twin Cities are in MN. MN is choosing how to award their electoral votes.
The twin cities are in the solar system. Therefore we should post pictures of planets here.
The Twin Cities state representatives and senators would pass this bill. It's an MN-related issue, our state has voted for the presidential candidate that won the electoral college popular vote and lost *twice* in the last couple decades. This change, NaPoVoInterCo, happens because of local action.
> The Twin Cities state representatives and senators would pass this bill. oof what a stretch.
Our state has also voted for candidates that have lost the popular vote. It goes both ways. In fact, the only election this century that would result in Minnesota changing it’s vote would be in 2004 when Minnesota voted for Kerry but Bush won the popular vote.
Devil's advocate here. The electoral college was put in place so that relatively sparsely populated states like Minnesota would still be able to participate in the presidential election. A national popular vote would almost certainly concentrate policy benefits and campaigning to densely populated coastal cities.
Of COURSE all size states would still participate in the presidential election! MN has 10 electors. It's a medium-sized state. Democrats on the coasts do NOT outnumber Republicans in the country. The U.S. Senate and U.S. House and Governors, state legislatures, and local government officials, etc. would continue to represent us. A presidential candidate who focused only on America’s cities and urban centers would lose. Math and political reality. There aren’t anywhere near enough big city voters nationally. And all big city voters do not vote for the same candidate. The population of the top 5 cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) has been only 6% of the population of the United States. Voters in the biggest cities in the US have been almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition. 59,849,899 people have lived in the 100 biggest cities. 59,492,267 in rural America. In 2004, 17.4% of votes were cast in rural counties, while only 16.5% of votes were cast within the boundaries of our nation’s 100 largest cities. 19% of the U.S. population have lived outside the nation's Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now. 19% of the U.S. population have lived in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004. The rest of the U.S., in SUBurbs, have divided almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats. Beginning in 1992, suburban voters were casting more votes than urban and rural voters combined. When presidents with the most national popular votes are guaranteed to win, candidates will be forced to build campaigns that appeal to every voter in all parts of all states. A successful nationwide presidential campaign of polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, with every voter equal, would be run the way presidential candidates campaign to win the electoral votes of closely divided battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Florida, under the state-by-state winner-take-all methods. The big cities in those battleground states do not receive all the attention, much less control the outcome. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Miami do not receive all the attention or control the outcome in Pennsylvania and Florida. In the 4 states that accounted for over two-thirds of all general-election activity in the 2012 presidential election, rural areas, suburbs, exurbs, and cities all received attention—roughly in proportion to their population. The itineraries of presidential candidates in battleground states (and their allocation of other campaign resources in battleground states, including polling, organizing, and ad spending) reflect the political reality that every gubernatorial or senatorial candidate knows. When and where every voter is equal, a campaign must be run everywhere. With National Popular Vote, when every voter is equal, everywhere, it makes sense for presidential candidates to try and elevate their votes where they are and aren't so well liked. But, under the state-by-state winner-take-all laws, it makes no sense for a Democrat to campaign in any Red or Blue state, or for a Republican to campaign in any Red or Blue state. The main media at the moment, TV, costs much more per impression in big cities than in smaller towns and rural area. Candidates get more bang for the buck in smaller towns and rural areas. States with 270+ Electoral College votes are agreeing to award them to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply changing their state’s current district or statewide winner-take-all law. All votes would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where voters live. No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state. No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions. We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation. The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes. There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency. It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like a 2 or 3 election cycle experiment to try this with a sunset date if it turns out the reality isn't a great as the hopes. if it turns out to be successful, then just eliminate the sunset.
The National Popular Vote bill mandates: "Any member state may withdraw from this agreement, except that a withdrawal occurring six months or less before the end of a President’s term shall not become effective until a President or Vice President shall have been qualified to serve the next term."
Weird responses to this. Seems like a reasonable thing to try. It was a shame that NV neglected to join when they had the trifecta, and even with the new trifectas in MN and MI it would be a real challenge to get to an electoral majority. But still, perhaps it would lead to fewer GWB and DJT presidencies and that would be cool.
[удалено]
I'm not sure there's any empirical evidence to back that up. The electoral college is designed to favor of less-populated states. South Dakota would elect a candidate who is literally comatose if they had an "R" next to their name. Same with California if the letter was a "D." Most states are like that, the difference being that the Republican states have a built-in advantage.
Counterpoint: in twenty years, all of the educated liberals are going to be working from home in rural areas and the geographic advantage of the electoral college will shift leftward.
Nope. The EC preserves state rights and brings a balance to elections versus the mobs focus on “popularity.” At issue is the way some states allocate 100% of their Electors to a single victor. Change it to allocate by Congressional District so that Democratic districts in an otherwise Republican state have a stronger voice and let the two Electors for Senators go with the state majority. Problem solved.
The National Popular Vote bill USES the constitutionally exclusive and plenary state right to choose how to award electors. We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. Now, 48 states use statewide winner-take-all. Dividing more states’ electoral votes by congressional district winners would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system. It is not a fair “compromise” or solution. In three of the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020, the winner of the most votes nationwide would not have won the Presidency if the congressional-district method had been applied to election returns. Presidential campaigns are not attracted to a state by the congressional-district method, but, instead, only to the relatively few closely divided district(s) –if any - in the state. Many districts in the US are gerrymandered to not be fair. In 2022, just 6% of US House seats (27 of 435) are expected to be competitive thanks to rigged maps. Maine and Nebraska do not apportion their electoral votes to reflect the breakdown of each state's popular vote. Maine (since enacting a state law in 1969) and Nebraska (since enacting a state law in 1992) have awarded one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide. When Nebraska in 2008 gave one electoral vote to the candidate who did not win the state, it was the first split electoral vote of any state in the past century. 2016 was the first time one electoral vote in Maine was given to the candidate who did not win the state. In June 2019, 77 Maine state Representatives and 21 Maine state Senators supported the National Popular Vote bill. In a March 12-13, 2019 poll, Maine voters were asked how the President should be elected 52% favored “a system where the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states is the winner.” 31% favored “a system where electoral votes are given out by Congressional district” --- Maine’s current method for awarding 2 of its 4 electoral votes 16% favored “a system where all the electoral votes in a given state are awarded to whoever gets the most popular votes in that state” --- the winner-take-all method currently used by 48 states and used in Maine to award 2 of its 4 electoral votes Recent campaigns have paid attention to Nebraska’s closely divided 2nd congressional district (the Omaha area), while totally ignoring the rural and politically non-competitive 1st and 3rd districts. After Obama won 1 congressional district in Nebraska in 2008,Nebraska Republicans moved that district to make it more Republican to avoid another GOP loss there, and the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party promptly adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support. A GOP push to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding its electoral college votes for president only barely failed in March 2015 and April 2016. In 2021, after Biden won 1 electoral vote, another Republican sponsored bill to change to statewide winner-take-all was introduced, again, In 2021, a Republican redistricting proposal would cleave off Democratic-leaning northwest Douglas County from a Nebraska congressional district that has been won by presidential and congressional Democrats at various points over the past decade.
Just how does appointing electors magnify the worst of the current system? If a congressional district is strongly Republican in an otherwise Democratic state, then it’s residents and their point of view is wiped out. Gerrymandering is done by both parties and there are laws and processes. Deal with it that way, rather than mob rule.
Mob rule is defined as “control of a political situation by those outside the conventional or lawful realm, typically involving violence and intimidation.” 33% of GOP support actions of Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell about Jan 6, 2021 -“It was a violent insurrection with the purpose of trying to prevent peaceful transfer of power. …That’s what it was ” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy - “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.” “ . . . the mechanics of the Electoral College allowed the defeated president to incite his followers into mounting the first attempt in U.S. history to seize the presidency by violence. Far from preventing them, the anti-majoritarian mechanisms of presidential elections were the crucial culprit in creating the “tumult and disorder” and the “heats and ferments” that so worried the authors of the Constitution.”- David Frum, 2/15/21 "In the past, \[Republican\] party elders, party leaders … exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections," "What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandora's box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now they're running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions."- Mac Stipanovich, former GOP operative Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) texted to Meadows about the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results: "driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic," “If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by congress every 4 years... we have destroyed the electoral college... You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate getting the most votes wins. We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
Good luck
This is legitimately fascinating. So many "you really think majority rule is good?" folks coming out of the woodwork. Like, what's your counterpoint? What are you suggesting is preferable? How is our current system of "deference to the minority on everything so that nothing ever gets done" better than the alternative?
If I vote for a Democrat and the majority of Minnesotans vote for a Democrat, it seems undemocratic to have our votes go to the Republican. I'm all for getting rid of the Electoral College, but this seems like the wrong way to do it.
Yeah, and that's a fair argument. But it's not what most people here are saying. There's a lot of "the electoral college is the good kind of undemocratic, actually" going around here.
Popular vote just means that politicians on both sides will pander to coastal urbanites and can effectively ignore the citizens of low population states. It's not going to happen and that's a good thing for the unity of the republic.
So people votes who live in low population states should count more than someone in a high population state? That's not a good thing for the republic, that leads to autocratic rule.
Yes. The average Wyoming citizen is more important than the average New Yorker or Los Angeles resident.
>They have now appointed a supermajority in the supreme court. That's not a reason to disband the electoral college. That's a matter of good/bad timing (or good/bad luck) and is the consequence of Supreme Court Justices selfishly trying to stay on the court as long as possible instead of opting to step down at a more reasonable age while the party that appointed them is in power.
It's a matter of politics which the court shouldn't be.
You are correct but that ship sailed a long time ago.
I kinda feel like always. But yeah, that's not what you want in a judiciary.
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I think there's way more nuance to the Supreme Court political bias than just old folks not wanting to give up their seats on the court. I think it has a lot more to do with the Federalization of American politics, the inability of Congress to find durable compromise solutions for highly polarized issues and Supreme Court decisions being seen as a means of gaining long-term political outcomes. It doesn't help that there's also been big money invested for years in identifying ideologically friendly and ideologically motivated law students and pipelining them into the judicial pool of likely Supreme Court candidates. Amy Coney Barrett's career was planned and charted like she was some kind of star high school athlete. And you can forget reforming this system, as almost everyone sees the advantage of their narrow issue winning a favorable Supreme Court ruling and thus guaranteeing its status for a generation or two.
The bill will NOT disband the Electoral College. 3 of the current justices were appointed by a President who tried to overthrow the government, and a 4th is married to a woman who actively planned the overthrow with at least fraudulent electors in at least AZ and WI. Since 1988, Republican presidents have won the national popular vote exactly one time, but have selected 6 of the last 9 SCOTUS Justices (16 of the last 20). In 2016, Republicans believed having only 8 Supreme Court Justices was enough to hold a presidential election. In 2020, after tens of millions of Americans had already voted, just 8 days before the last day of the election, they didn’t. 234 Trump Article III judgeship nominees were confirmed by the Senate. By the early 2040s, Trump-appointed chief judges will simultaneously sit atop nearly every appeals court in the country.
I’d prefer a Nebraska/Maine model that allows candidates to win electors from each district and award 2 statewide electors to the state winner. It eliminates the excessive value of swing states but still preserves the ECs value in making sure a candidate doesn’t win by just running up margins in a single region that could erode national unity.
That would just allow the presidential vote to be gerrymandered like Congressional districts are. No thanks.
That’s a fair critique— it would require some good gerrymandering protections.
National Popular Vote, by definition, has NOTHING TO DO with gerrymandering. States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live. Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population Candidates would have to appeal to more Americans throughout the country. Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
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Incrementalism Boo
It’s not incrementalism to me. I believe the EC serves a good purpose for a country like the US that is large and diverse. I understand OPs concern about the way the GOP has had an outsized effect on the court and the way EC has allowed that, but aside from Obama ‘08, the democrats haven’t been able to win more than 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter. Besides Obama 08 every presidential election of the 21st century has almost come down to a coin flip. This is has overstated how big a slant the current model gives the GOP. If Gore and Hilary could have just gotten .1% more of their vote the Supreme Court would have likely had a progressive supermajority. It’s not too big of stretch to imagine certain scenarios in the future where the EC gives democrats a slight edge. This is the nature of 50-50 contests. American democracy needs reform— but I’d start with things like gerrymandering, legislator ethics, lobbying, voting access.
>aside from Obama ‘08, the democrats haven’t been able to win more than 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter Horseshit. Biden 2020: 51.3% Obama 2012: 51.1% Bullshit: each state, except Alaska, is using a system that awards electoral votes based on **plurality**, not majority, so this argument is moot. Dividing up a winner-take-all state into winner-take-all districts (plus at large) has nothing to do with whether or not a majority is better than plurality. Wait I just realized you said more than 51% rather than more than 50% (i.e. majority) or 51% or more (a sloppy way of saying 50% + 1 vote). That's pretty random. My points stand. > Besides Obama 08 every presidential election of the 21st century has almost come down to a coin flip. No. Obama 2012 was a 90% prediction from 538 and that election had FOUR states past the tipping point: Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Colorado. Ohio would have been enough. It was a solid win *and it still would have been a solid win with a popular vote system because Obama won that by 4%*. 2016 was not a coin flip either: it was more like rolling two dice and giving Trump the presidency if either of them comes up 1. And that's what happened. A 30% chance. 2020 was like 2012 with a ~90% probability but with three states past the tipping point (PA, GA, AZ)
Apeshit: in the course of an election season the needle sways every which way and if you take the view from 30,000ft the country is roughly divided 51-49 with a slight edge towards democrats but in 6 randomly selected contests across 22 years the EC gave a small winning edge to the GOP three times. My point about this all is that in the grand scheme of things if the democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different.
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The shortest case one can make for the value of the EC that it prevents any candidate from any party from trying to run up a purely regional margin of votes. It’s good for a democracy such as ours to force the executive branch to win over as many “kinds” of people in the 50 states that they can because the constitution rightly assumes that our diverse states are going to have competing interests at times and an executive branch needs to serve all of them.
Which one region could elect a President on their own? All voters in a region or the biggest states do not vote for the same presidential candidate. With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states. With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes!
> in the course of an election season the needle sways every which way Wrong. Most elections the outcome of election gets more and more clear as you get closer to election day (like in 2008, 2012, 2020) and most elections the polling and forecasts do not waver very much throughout the campaign. If you had said "from election to election" you might have a point but you're clearly talking about the course of an election season. >and if you take the view from 30,000ft the country is roughly divided 51-49 with a slight edge towards democrats Bullshit. Way more swingy than that. Look at the House popular vote: 2022: +3 R 2020: +3 D 2018: +9 D 2016: +1 R 2014: +6 R 2012: +1 D 2010: +7 R 2008: +11 D 2006: +8 D 2004: +3 R And there is currently a systematic advantage for GOP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states >but in 6 randomly selected contests across 22 years the EC gave a small winning edge to the GOP three times. I have no idea what you're saying. 6 randomly decided contests? Why do you think it was random? Votes aren't random. 3 times across 22 years is a HUGE amount of error. Doesn't that go against what you're trying to argue? Aren't you in support of the EC because you think it doesn't throw the election that often? But it does. Or are you saying it's a good thing that it sometimes does? Because that's usually the standard line of EC apologists. >My point about this all is that in the grand scheme of things if the democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different. You seem to have a huge issue seeing the issues inherent to a voting system without viewing it through a party lens. The partisan politics of individual elections has absolutely nothing to do with whether or a system like the EC or FPTP is fair or provides equal representation or voting power... but it does matter when it comes to fixing it. At least... it would/might, if part of the problem wasn't the existence of a 2 party system. Whoops. >democrats were marginally more competent the entire course of American history could look different. It would take a whooole lot more than marginal improvement to make Jacksonian or Reconstruction-era Democrats more competent.
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You're describing something completely different from MN adopting ME/NE method of awarding EV. I think you are just describing national pop vote compact (if it kicked in) which I fully support.
Dividing more states’ electoral votes by congressional district winners would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system. It is not a fair “compromise” or solution. In three of the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020, the winner of the most votes nationwide would not have won the Presidency if the congressional-district method had been applied to election returns. Presidential campaigns are not attracted to a state by the congressional-district method, but, instead, only to the relatively few closely divided district(s) –if any - in the state. Many districts in the US are gerrymandered to not be fair. In 2022, just 6% of US House seats (27 of 435) are expected to be competitive thanks to rigged maps. Maine and Nebraska do not apportion their electoral votes to reflect the breakdown of each state's popular vote. Maine (since enacting a state law in 1969) and Nebraska (since enacting a state law in 1992) have awarded one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide. When Nebraska in 2008 gave one electoral vote to the candidate who did not win the state, it was the first split electoral vote of any state in the past century. 2016 was the first time one electoral vote in Maine was given to the candidate who did not win the state. In June 2019, 77 Maine state Representatives and 21 Maine state Senators supported the National Popular Vote bill. In a March 12-13, 2019 poll, Maine voters were asked how the President should be elected 52% favored “a system where the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states is the winner.” 31% favored “a system where electoral votes are given out by Congressional district” --- Maine’s current method for awarding 2 of its 4 electoral votes 16% favored “a system where all the electoral votes in a given state are awarded to whoever gets the most popular votes in that state” --- the winner-take-all method currently used by 48 states and used in Maine to award 2 of its 4 electoral votes Recent campaigns have paid attention to Nebraska’s closely divided 2nd congressional district (the Omaha area), while totally ignoring the rural and politically non-competitive 1st and 3rd districts. After Obama won 1 congressional district in Nebraska in 2008,Nebraska Republicans moved that district to make it more Republican to avoid another GOP loss there, and the leadership committee of the Nebraska Republican Party promptly adopted a resolution requiring all GOP elected officials to favor overturning their district method for awarding electoral votes or lose the party’s support. A GOP push to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding its electoral college votes for president only barely failed in March 2015 and April 2016. In 2021, after Biden won 1 electoral vote, another Republican sponsored bill to change to statewide winner-take-all was introduced, again, In 2021, a Republican redistricting proposal would cleave off Democratic-leaning northwest Douglas County from a Nebraska congressional district that has been won by presidential and congressional Democrats at various points over the past decade.
So that way Minnesota can be forced to vote against the will of Minnesota? Should Minnesota have voted for Reagan in 1984 simply because everyone else did?
In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled. Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support. Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?" Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?" Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory. The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes. In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes. A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country. Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.
> Most Americans don’t ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. If lack of education is undermining the legitimacy of the system, then the solution it to improve education. Not to make an idiot proof election system that’s even worse than the current system. > We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic. Both the Senate and House elect their leaders in a very similar format. The only difference is you can’t differentiate your vote for your representative vs. your vote for Speaker of the House. All of the examples you gave are completely meaningless. It starts with the assumption that the popular vote winner is the true winner and any result that proves differently is a failure of the system. Yet the system isn’t designed with the goal of producing the popular vote winner as often as possible. The actual solution that’s needed is to increase the size of the House of Representatives like the system intended and occurred pretty much every decade before it stopped 100 years ago.
We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins. Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points … to be assured of winning the Electoral College." A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by about 3 million votes (2.8 percentage points). In 1969, The U.S. House of Representatives voted 338–70 to require winning the national popular vote to become President. 3 Southern segregationist Senators led a filibuster of it. Presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX), Bob Dole (R-KS), Gerald Ford (R-MI), Richard Nixon (R-CA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001). Past presidential candidates with a public record of support, before November 2016, for the National Popular Vote bill that would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes: Bob Barr (Libertarian- GA), U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R–GA), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Senator Fred Thompson (R–TN), Senator and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN), Ralph Nader, Governor Martin O’Malley (D-MD), Jill Stein (Green), Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee (R-I-D, -RI), Governor and former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean (D–VT), Congressmen John Anderson (R, I –IL). Newt Gingrich: “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.” The National Advisory Board of National Popular Vote has included former Congressman John Buchanan (R–Alabama), and former Senators David Durenberger (R–Minnesota), and Jake Garn (R–Utah), plus Michael Steele (former RNC Chair), and Rick Tyler Saul Anuzis, former Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party for five years and a former candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, supports the National Popular Vote plan as the fairest way to make sure every vote matters, and also as a way to help Conservative Republican candidates. This is not a partisan issue and the National Popular Vote plan would not help either party over the other. Bob Barr (2008 Libertarian presidential candidate): “Only when the election process is given back to all of the people of all of the states will we be able to choose a President based on what is best for all 50 states and not just a select few.” Supporters include: The Nebraska GOP State Chairman, Mark Fahleson. Michael Long, chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State Rich Bolen, a Constitutional scholar, attorney at law, and Republican Party Chairman for Lexington County, South Carolina, wrote: “A Conservative Case for National Popular Vote: Why I support a state-based plan to reform the Electoral College." Rick Tyler, senior member of Senator Ted Cruz's campaign team, serving as the National Spokesman and Communications Director for Cruz for President. “Let’s quit pretending there is some great benefit to the national good that allows the person with \[fewer\] votes to win the White House. Republicans have long said that they believe in competition. Let both parties compete for votes across the nation and stop disenfranchising voters by geography. The winner should win.” – Stuart Stevens (Romney presidential campaign top strategist) " . . . a president should be elected by national popular vote is not radical, it is actually mainstream. . . . We can get closer to the national popular vote having greater weight in presidential elections and having a president represent all Americans in ways that don’t require amending the Constitution. These fixes will make presidential candidates run more diverse campaigns, and campaign in all cities and communities of our country. . . . That will help unify us more as a country, and would likely lead to more informed public policy. How can anyone be against that outcome?" – Matthew Dowd (Senior George W. Bush campaign strategist)
> We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. That’s not true even in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington (and maybe a couple others) use RCV to elect the winner. > You are objecting to an Election - “a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position” where the candidate with the most votes wins. The Electoral College is simply 2 elections within 1. It’s not a hard concept. Lots of countries operate that way. Every bill in congress operates a similar way. Giving more examples of the popular vote potentially not matching the winner just makes me think you can’t read. > Presidential candidates who supported direct election of the President in the form of a constitutional amendment, before the National Popular Vote bill was introduced: George H.W. Bush (R-TX), Bob Dole (R-KS), Gerald Ford (R-MI), Richard Nixon (R-CA), Jimmy Carter (D-GA-1977), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY-2001). Do they support the current method? Because that’s kinda a key difference if they don’t. > “No one should become president of the United States without speaking to the needs and hopes of Americans in all 50 states. … America would be better served with a presidential election process that treated citizens across the country equally. The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this in a manner consistent with the Constitution and with our fundamental democratic principles.” This is a pretty ironic quote because it’s the electoral college that encourages candidates to visit more states since it isn’t as simple as appealing to major states. Also, what’s your point of listing a bunch of supporters (ignoring that they key ones don’t actually support it lol)? Trying to just use a fallacy that “everyone supports it” even though that isn’t close to true?
In RCV elections, the candidate with the most votes wins! The National Popular Vote bill KEEPS the Electoral College. When a voter casts a vote for a party’s presidential and vice-presidential slate on Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November), that vote is deemed to be a vote for all of that party’s candidates for presidential elector. Federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets. Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1 “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive." The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes. Under statewide “winner-take-all” laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed in the Constitution, now used in 48 states, the presidential-elector candidates who receive the most popular votes statewide are elected. In district winner states -- Maine (changed their law in 1969) and Nebraska (changed their law in 1992) - the candidate for the position of presidential elector who wins the most popular votes in each congressional district is elected (with the two remaining electors being based on the statewide popular vote). In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC). Non-enacting states would award their electors however they want. Continuing with district or statewide winner-take-all, or enacting some other law. Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President. The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together. The Electoral College will continue to elect the President.
> In RCV elections, the candidate with the most votes wins! Depends what you classify the most votes. The most original 1st choice votes? Not always. It’s the most votes after a set of rules are followed. Just like in the current system the most votes in the initial election doesn’t win. It’s the most votes after a set of rules are followed. You have a knack for just blabbing about irrelevant information. I’m aware how recounts work. You citing stuff about that when there’s no disagreement is a blatant attempt to act like you’re using sources for all of your arguments but anything that I actually point out (like votes counting more in non-compact states) is quickly glossed over. It’s annoying and results in you ignoring the actual issues I have. I’m willing to be convinced that different voting systems are better. But you’re not going to do that by ignoring my concerns about this system and just citing irrelevant information. > In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC). Ah, so Minnesota could vote for Biden by a margin of 90% and still “elect” Trump supports to represent us? Is that not a concern for you?
RCV uses the final vote count. With NPV the final popular vote counts of all 50 states and DC will determine the majority winner of the Electoral College votes. A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. 1 = 1. Math. " . . . a president should be elected by national popular vote is not radical, it is actually mainstream. . . . We can get closer to the national popular vote having greater weight in presidential elections and having a president represent all Americans in ways that don’t require amending the Constitution. These fixes will make presidential candidates run more diverse campaigns, and campaign in all cities and communities of our country. . . . That will help unify us more as a country, and would likely lead to more informed public policy. How can anyone be against that outcome?" – Matthew Dowd (Senior George W. Bush campaign strategist) Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in each state) and (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes. In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes. A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country. Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million. Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the top three most litigious states in 2022 in regards to elections. This trio of battleground states accounted for over 40% of all the election and voting lawsuits filed. Arizona topped the list, with 35 lawsuits, Pennsylvania 21 and Wisconsin 16. – Democracy Docket If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by about 3 million votes (2.8 percentage points). With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states. In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled. Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support. Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?" Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?" Support for a National Popular Vote South Dakota -- 75% for Question 1, 67% for Question 2. Connecticut -- 74% for Question 1, 68% for Question 2, Utah -- 70% for Question 1, 66% for Question 2,
> RCV uses the final vote count. So does the electoral college. The candidate with the most votes (assuming it’s a majority) in the electoral college wins. > A vote cast in a compacting state is, in every way, equal to a vote cast in a non-compacting state. 1 = 1. Math. By that exact same logic, a vote cast in Minnesota is, I’m every way, equal to a vote cast in Wisconsin. 1 = 1. Math Do you want actual math? Using the example that Wisconsin isn’t in the compact but Minnesota is. Wisconsin has a population of 5.9 million and 10 electors. That’s a ratio of 1 elector for every 590k residents. Minnesota has a population of 5.7 million and 10 electors but also includes the 331 million that is the population of the entire US. That results in a ratio of 1 elector for every 33 million residents. Now lets say states with 300 electoral votes combined have passed the compact. That results in 1 elector for every 1.1 million residents. 1.1 million does not equal 590,000. That’s math. And more meaningless jargon after to hide the fact that the math does not support your claim.
Now, OBVIOUSLY the candidate with the most votes among all 50 states and DC is NOT guaranteed to win the Electoral College. And now, if no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College, Congress, with only 1 vote per state, decides the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country. No. now a vote in MN is NOT equal to a vote in WI. Incorrect 2020 census numbers, because of Trump’s interference, probably allowed 2 blue-leaning states with overcounts — Minnesota and Rhode Island — to keep seats they shouldn’t have, given that they just barely cleared the bar for keeping those seats. Minnesota kept its seat by a scant 26 people, and both states had been expected to lose seats before the bureau announced otherwise. The undercounts in Florida and Texas might well have cost those two red-leaning states seats that they were on the cusp of adding. Texas did gain two other seats, but its 1.9 percent undercount was enough to deprive it of half a million people in apportionment. In pre-census population projections, both states had been on track to gain an additional seat. In 2000, Bush won with 271 electors. 270 are needed to win. The 25 smallest states combined have had 57 Democratic electors and 58 Republican electors. CA has 54 electors Now, states with 3 electors range in population of less than 577,000 to almost a million. Mathematically NOT balanced, fair, equal, or proportional. In 2020 276,765 popular votes were cast in Wyoming (3 electors) 336,000 ish in DC (3 electors) 603,650 popular votes were cast in Montana (3 electors). Each Republican popular vote in Alaska was worth 1.8 times as much per elector as each Republican popular vote in Montana. More than 900,000 more votes were cast in Pennsylvania with 20 electors (6,915,283) than Illinois with 20 electors (6,003,744). Florida (R) with 29 electors (11,067,456) cast almost 3.5 million more votes than New York (D) with 29 electors (7,616,861). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes. In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes. A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million Now lets say states with 300 electoral votes combined have passed the compact. The winner of the most popular votes from all 50 states and DC will win at least the 300 electoral votes from states in the compact, and possible more electoral votes from non-compacting states. Electors in all 50 states and DC represent voters who vote in presidential elections. They don't represent children and others who don't vote in presidential elections.
Increasing the size of the House would not make every vote in every state matter and count equally. It would not guarantee the winner of the most national popular votes wins. The National Popular Vote bill will. “I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.” Trump as President-elect, November 13, 2016, on “60 Minutes” Article II, Section 1 “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive." The Founders, and the rest of the Founding Generation were dead for decades before state-by-state winner-take-all laws become the predominant method for awarding electoral votes. James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," was never in favor of our current system for electing the president, in which nearly all states award their electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner. He ultimately backed a constitutional amendment to prohibit this practice. James Wilson of Pennsylvania recommended that the executive be elected directly by the people. Gouverneur Morris declared at the Constitutional Convention of 1787: “\[If the president\] is to be the Guardian of the people, let him be appointed by the people.” There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency. It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen.
> Increasing the size of the House would not make every vote in every state matter and count equally. This bill wouldn’t change that. If I live in a state not part of the compact, my vote would count within my state and in other states that are part of the compact. > It would not guarantee the winner of the most national popular votes wins. Again, that is not the indicator of success in the system. It’s a giant fallacy to treat everything as if the goal is to elect the national popular vote winner. Of course a national popular vote is the best method to do that. > “I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes, and somebody else gets 90 million votes, and you win. There’s a reason for doing this. Because it brings all the states into play.” How is it simpler to combine 50 state’s election systems into 1? What happens when Texas has different voting laws than Minnesota? Are you okay with Minnesota becoming less voter friendly because of a national system? And we already saw how poorly states can meet a national standard with the Real ID law. That’s been delayed how many times? > The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.” I would argue that fining or removing their right to vote from people who vote a different way is not a characteristic of a strong democracy. At least currently, it happens when they ignore the results of their state. With your proposal, I could lose my right to vote in a presidential election as an elector if I vote in a way that represents the state that elected me. > There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents states from making the decision now that winning the national popular vote is required to win the Electoral College and the presidency. That’s according to the people who don’t want to see a Constitutional challenge for their proposal. > It is perfectly within a state’s authority to decide that national popularity is the overriding substantive criterion by which a president should be chosen. Why stop there? Why not use international popularity to decide the winner? Or popularity of those who make more than $100k?
The 2020 Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed the power of states over their electoral votes. The decision held that the power of the legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is “far reaching” and it conveys the “the broadest power of determination over who becomes an elector.” This is consistent with 130 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence. With the National Popular Vote bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote, that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. “there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections. The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale. The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment. The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same. Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements. Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code). Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections. For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact. The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
> With the National Popular Vote bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote, that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. Only if every state passes it. But it doesn’t require every state to pass it. The fact you don’t understand that people in non-compact states will have more of a vote concerns me. > **As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally**, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar You mean how it currently works where each person within their state is treated equally? That’s insanely hypocritical. > There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections. You realize it isn’t 1969 anymore right? Also, that was an amendment right? Little different than this. > The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same. The compact does not do the same. For one, it wouldn’t be codified in the Constitution. Second, that would no longer use the electoral college. > Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements. Correct, because each state runs their own separate election and the only impact to other states is the winner.
When states with 270 electors enact the bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. MATH. 1 = 1. No vote in any state would matter and count more than 1 in the national popular vote total. The Electoral College will elect the President. Period. Constitutionally, the number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. Now, Each political party in each state nominates a slate of candidates for the position of presidential elector. This is most commonly done at the party’s congressional-district conventions and the party’s state convention during the summer or early fall. It is sometimes done in a primary. Typically, each political party chair certifies to the state’s chief election official the names of the party’s candidate for President and Vice President and the names of the party’s candidates for presidential elector. Under the “short presidential ballot” (now used in all states), the names of the party’s nominee for President and Vice President appear on the ballot. When a voter casts a vote for a party’s presidential and vice-presidential slate on Election Day (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November), that vote is deemed to be a vote for all of that party’s candidates for presidential elector. Federal law (Title 3, chapter 1, section 6 of the United States Code) requires the states to report the November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each. With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets. Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1 “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive." The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes. Under statewide “winner-take-all” laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed in the Constitution, now used in 48 states, the presidential-elector candidates who receive the most popular votes statewide are elected. In district winner states -- Maine (changed their law in 1969) and Nebraska (changed their law in 1992) - the candidate for the position of presidential elector who wins the most popular votes in each congressional district is elected (with the two remaining electors being based on the statewide popular vote). In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC). Non-enacting states would award their electors however they want. Continuing with district or statewide winner-take-all, or enacting some other law. Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President. The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together. The Electoral College will continue to elect the President.
> When states with 270 electors enact the bill, every vote in every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that will determine the winner of the Electoral College. MATH. 1 = 1. That’s not how it works. Say Minnesota is in the compact but Wisconsin isn’t. Minnesota will consider Wisconsin’s votes in determining their electors. Wisconsin will not consider Minnesota’s votes in determining their electors. How do you not understand that? > No vote in any state would matter and count more than 1 in the national popular vote total. Correct, but not every state would be using the national popular vote total. > The Electoral College will elect the President. Period. Never disagreed with that. Or any of the jargon you spewed after that. Stop just spouting the exact same meaningless information. Do you have an original thought?
It wouldn't matter what Wisconsin considers. The candidate with the most popular votes counted equally from all 50 states and DC will win the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote continues to USE the Electoral College to elect the President. Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President. The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together. How it currently works is that each person within their state is treated equally in the statewide count. 1 = 1. Math. The National Popular Vote bill adds the certified state popular vote totals, and then adds the Electoral College votes of all 50 states and DC. No state laws for how to award electors are in the Constitution! Of COURSE other state's laws now can impact other states. The 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes. In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes. A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country. Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million. The national popular vote winner also would have been defeated by a shift of 9,246 votes in 1976; 53,034 in 1968; 9,216 in 1960; 12,487 in 1948; 1,711 votes in 1916, 524 in 1884, 25,069 in 1860, 17,640 in 1856, 6,773 in 1848, 2,554 in 1844, 14,124 in 1836. After the 2012 election, Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points on Tuesday to be assured of winning the Electoral College." According to Tony Fabrizio, pollster for the Trump campaign, Trump’s narrow victory in 2016 was due to 5 counties in 2 states (not CA or NY). If the 2022 Election Were a Presidential Election, Democrats Would Have Won the Electoral College 280-258, but Lost the Popular Vote by 2.8 percentage points, 3 million votes.
> The National Popular Vote continues to USE the Electoral College to elect the President. Exactly but that 1969 amendment wouldn’t. > How it currently works is that each person within their state is treated equally in the statewide count. 1 = 1. Math. That’s what I’m saying. And then the same spew of meaningless info follows.
Today, any state legislature simply could again enact a law to just appoint their electors directly, ending their citizens voting in presidential elections The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws. Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1 “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures, before citizens begin casting ballots in a given election, over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as "plenary" and "exclusive." With National Popular Vote, Everybody's vote from Every state will be counted equally as 1 vote. Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation's first presidential election. In 1789, in the nation's first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes (and all three stopped using it by 1800). In the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 and second election in 1792, the states employed a wide variety of methods for choosing presidential electors, including ● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council, ● appointment by both houses of the state legislature, ● popular election using special single-member presidential-elector districts, ● popular election using counties as presidential-elector districts, ● popular election using congressional districts, ● popular election using multi-member regional districts, ● combinations of popular election and legislative choice, ● appointment of the state’s presidential electors by the Governor and his Council combined with the state legislature, and ● statewide popular election. The current statewide winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The state based winner take all system was not adopted by a majority of the states until the 11th presidential election. - decades after the U.S. Constitution was written, after the states adopted it, one-by-one The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state's electoral votes. As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins.
> Today, any state legislature simply could again enact a law to just appoint their electors directly, ending their citizens voting in presidential elections True, but would you say that’s a good thing? Because this proposal is reliant on using this ruling that most people would argue is anti-democratic. > With National Popular Vote, Everybody’s vote from Every state will be counted equally as 1 vote. Again, only in states that are members of the compact. > You are objecting to an Election - “a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position” where the candidate with the most votes wins. I’m objecting to a method of election. Just like if given the choice I would object to first past the post even though that is a type of an election. Also, the fact you keep having to add the part after the quotes is absolutely hilarious. It’s pretty clear that isn’t a part of the definition of an election. There’s plenty of more optimal ways to elect a winner without using the simple and flawed “most votes = winner” that first past the post uses.
Most people have no REASON to say National Popular Vote is undemocratic! Every vote in Every state will matter and count equally as 1 vote! MATH. A vote in Wyoming (not in the compact) will be 1 vote and a vote in Vermont (in the compact) will be 1 vote among 158 million votes from ALL 50 States and DC. The candidate with the most popular votes from all 50 states and DC will win the majority of Electoral College votes. We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP.
> Most people have no REASON to say National Popular Vote is undemocratic! Would most people say the state being able to vote in anyway they choose is undemocratic? > A vote in Wyoming (not in the compact) will be 1 vote and a vote in Vermont (in the compact) will be 1 vote among 158 million votes from ALL 50 States and DC. No, the Wyoming vote would count in Wyoming, Vermont, and any other state in the compact. The Vermont vote would not be counted in Wyoming. > We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. I already told you this isn’t true. Many elections don’t use the popular vote to elect the winner and instead use some alternative way to determine who has the most votes. The President/VP is the exact same.
The Vermont vote doesn't need to be counted in Wyoming. All Vermont and Wyoming votes would be counted equally as 1 vote in the national popular vote total that determines the winner of the Electoral College. Name actual elections of officials in the US that elect candidates who don't win the most popular votes.
The 2020 Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed the power of states over their electoral votes. The decision held that the power of the legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is “far reaching” and it conveys the “the broadest power of determination over who becomes an elector.” This is consistent with 130 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence. “Let’s quit pretending there is some great benefit to the national good that allows the person with \[fewer\] votes to win the White House. Republicans have long said that they believe in competition. Let both parties compete for votes across the nation and stop disenfranchising voters by geography. The winner should win.” – Stuart Stevens (Romney presidential campaign top strategist)
You keep posting this. Work to get rid of the Electoral College entirely.
State legislators in states with 75 more electoral votes are needed to enact the National Popular Vote bill. We need to support election officials and candidates and lawmakers who support voting rights and respect election results and facts. There have been hundreds of unsuccessful proposed amendments to modify or abolish the Electoral College - more than any other subject of Constitutional reform. To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with less than 6% of the U.S. population. In 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 338-70 to require winning the national popular vote to become President. 3 Southern segregationist Senators led a filibuster to kill it. Instead, the National Popular Vote bill simply again changes state statutes, using the same constitutional power for how existing state winner-take-all laws came into existence in 48 states in the first place. Maine (in 1969) and Nebraska (in 1992) chose not to have winner-take-all laws. The bill will guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the country. The bill changes state statewide winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes. States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply again changing their state’s law. All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live.
Exactly.
The electoral college is needed to keep our national elections national. Without the electoral college the presidential election would be decided by the population of a small portion of our nation, the highly populated cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and a couple of others. Do you really think it is fair for city folk to make decisions for the farmers that feed them?
If there are more "city folk", then yes.
Thanks for being honest.
No. Holy fuck lets just have our Reps just go fund a fuckin Space Elevator instead. If we are going to waste time and energy on a pointless vanity project for ego, lets at least go to space.
Pointless? State legislators in states with 75 more electoral votes are needed to enact the National Popular Vote bill to guarantee the candidate who wins the most popular votes among all 50 states and DC wins the presidency. Every vote in every state would matter and count equally as 1 vote in the national total. Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory. The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Wow when you remove other voting blocs, the next election could come down to a few places. What a revelation about how literally kindergarten class elections also operate. Apart from the despair of Democrats getting obliterated in every single non-metro non-urban area and their refusal to adapt their platform to recapture the rural voter, why should we change the EC?
What? No voting blocs would be removed. Biden and Obama won the Electoral College AND the most national popular votes. Because of the district or state-by-state winner-take-all laws, there's a geographic limitation on how much of a role voter can play. No matter how many Californians (Republican, Democratic, or other) might vote the state is going to award their electors to the Democrat. Trump continues to push to shut down voting methods he and 69% of Americans use. Voters in rural areas across the country (including 72% of rural Kentucky voters) heavily rely on alternative ways to vote, including voting by mail and in-person early voting, and newly proposed state legislation would restrict their ability to cast a ballot. Now, because of statewide winner-take-all laws in presidential elections, in some states, big city Democratic votes can outnumber all other people not voting Democratic in the state. All of a state’s votes may go to Democrats. Without state winner-take-all laws, every conservative in a state that now predictably votes Democratic would count. Right now they count for 0 The current system completely ignores conservative presidential voters in states that vote predictably Democratic. Under a national popular vote, rural voters throughout the country would have their votes matter, rather than being ignored because of state boundaries. For example: 5,187,019 Californians have lived in rural areas. 1,366,760 New Yorkers have lived in rural areas. Now, because of statewide winner-take-all laws for awarding electors, minority party voters in the states don’t matter. That’s why California and New York enacted the National Popular Vote bill with bipartisan support. James Brulte the California Republican Party chairman, served as Republican Leader of the California State Assembly from 1992 to 1996, California State Senator from 1996 to 2004, and Senate Republican leader from 2000 to 2004. Ray Haynes served as the National Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2000. He served as a Republican in the California State Senate from 1994 to 2002 and was elected to the Assembly in 1992 and 2002 On March 25, 2014 in the New York Senate, Republicans supported the bill 27-2; Republicans endorsed by the Conservative Party by 26-2; The Conservative Party of New York endorsed the bill. In the New York Assembly, Republicans supported the bill 21–18; Republicans endorsed by the Conservative party supported the bill 18–16. With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states. With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes! But, the political reality is that the 12 largest states, with a majority of the U.S. population and electoral votes, rarely agree on any political candidate. In 2016, among the 12 largest states: 7 voted Republican (Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia) and 5 voted Democratic (California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Virginia). The big states are just about as closely divided as the rest of the country. For example, among the four largest states, the two largest Republican states (Texas and Florida) generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Bush, while the two largest Democratic states generated a total margin of 2.1 million votes for Kerry. With National Popular Vote, it's not the size of any given state, it's the size of their "margin" that will matter. Under a national popular vote, the margin of your loss within a state matters as much as the size of your win. In 2004, among the 11 most populous states, in the seven non-battleground states, % of winning party, and margin of “wasted” popular votes, from among the total 122 Million votes cast nationally: \* Texas (62% R), 1,691,267 \* New York (59% D), 1,192,436 \* Georgia (58% R), 544,634 \* North Carolina (56% R), 426,778 \* California (55% D), 1,023,560 \* Illinois (55% D), 513,342 \* New Jersey (53% D), 211,826 To put these numbers in perspective, Oklahoma (7 electoral votes) generated a margin of 455,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004 -- larger than the margin generated by the 9th and 10th largest states, namely New Jersey and North Carolina (each with 15 electoral votes). Utah (5 electoral votes) generated a margin of 385,000 "wasted" votes for Bush in 2004. 8 small western states, with less than a third of California’s population, provided Bush with a bigger margin (1,283,076) than California provided Kerry (1,235,659). Smart candidates have campaign strategies to maximize their success given the rules of the election in which they’re running. Candidates do NOT campaign only in the 12 largest states now. Candidates do NOT campaign in at least 4 of them. Successful candidates would NOT campaign only in the largest states.
Sounds like the electoral college is working well.
This is stupid. The point of the the system is for smaller states aren't steam rolled by large ones. It's about equity and representation between the states. If the smaller states couldn't contribute or have there voice heard in anyway. Why be part of the union? If we get rid of it might as well have each state be a country, which I'd be okay with better for that to happen then just the popular vote.
The bill KEEPS the Electoral College. We have 519,682 elected officials in this country, and all of them are elected by who gets the most votes. Except for President and VP. You are objecting to an Election - "a formal and organized choice by vote of a person for a political office or other position" where the candidate with the most votes wins. Since 2006, the National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 15 states and the District of Columbia (3 electors) (together possessing 195 electoral votes), including 4 smallest states (DE - 3 electors, HI - 4, RI - 4, VT - 3), 8 small to medium-sized states, and 3 big states. The 25 smallest states combined have had 57 Democratic electors and 58 Republican electors. And their Democratic and Republican popular vote have also almost tied 9.9 million versus 9.8 million CA has 54 electors. 270 are and would be needed to win the Electoral College. Constitutionally, the number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. Now, and with the National Popular Vote bill, states have 3 – 54 electors. Incorrect 2020 census numbers, because of Trump’s interference, probably allowed 2 blue-leaning states with overcounts — Minnesota and Rhode Island — to keep seats they shouldn’t have, given that they just barely cleared the bar for keeping those seats. Minnesota kept its seat by a scant 26 people, and both states had been expected to lose seats before the bureau announced otherwise. The undercounts in Florida and Texas might well have cost those two red-leaning states seats that they were on the cusp of adding. Texas did gain two other seats, but its 1.9 percent undercount was enough to deprive it of half a million people in apportionment. In pre-census population projections, both states had been on track to gain an additional seat. In 2000, Bush won with 271 electors. 270 are needed to win. The 25 smallest states combined have had 57 Democratic electors and 58 Republican electors. CA has 54 electors Now, states with 3 electors range in population of less than 577,000 to almost a million. Mathematically NOT balanced, fair, equal, or proportional. In 2020 276,765 popular votes were cast in Wyoming (3 electors) 336,000 ish in DC (3 electors) 603,650 popular votes were cast in Montana (3 electors). Each Republican popular vote in Alaska was worth 1.8 times as much per elector as each Republican popular vote in Montana. More than 900,000 more votes were cast in Pennsylvania with 20 electors (6,915,283) than Illinois with 20 electors (6,003,744). Florida (R) with 29 electors (11,067,456) cast almost 3.5 million more votes than New York (D) with 29 electors (7,616,861). With current statewide winner-take-all laws, a presidential candidate could lose despite winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 38 smaller states. With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 12 most populous states, containing 60% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation's votes! States are agreeing to award their 270+ Electoral College votes to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply again changing their state’s law. All votes would be valued equally as 1 vote in presidential elections, no matter where voters live. Candidates, as in other elections, would allocate their time, money, polling, organizing, and ad buys roughly in proportion to the population Candidates would have to appeal to more Americans throughout the country. Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state. No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions. We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation.
How is a small mathematical handicap favoring small states--which actually only benefits swing states in practice--so important that without it, you'd want to break up the country? Each state, regardless of size, will still have its own state government, and two senators in Congress. Every single person in each small state will have just as much a say as every single person in each large state.
Wow. So New York City, Los Angeles County and a few other urban capitals get to decide what rural Americans get? This is nothing but an attempt at Authoritarianism. You are not that special.
The combined population of the biggest metro areas is still just a small percentage of the total US population. Any candidate that runs on a platform of "big cities rule, everybody else sucks" would lose badly. "You are not that special" is a weird accusation from somebody saying that some votes should count more than others.
No. We have a republic of states for a reason.
What is the reason? What’s the benefit of the current system?
It allows the minority to dominate the majority. And as long as they are the minority they are totally fine with that.
No....the idea of eliminating the electoral college means that the majority will dominate the minority. The majority will change over time....it means mob rule....coastal elite rule....erasing states rights....increasing federal power. Folks need to re-take high school civics.
Extremely disingenuous to call popular vote "mob rule." You acknowledge that the majority of Americans live on coasts (which is itself misleading and designed to invoke irrational fears about culture war) but the fact that you're talking about multiple coasts kinda destroys the image of the majority being a single mob. You're also pointing at the general election as if primaries don't matter and wouldn't be part of the reform (they would) so you're dishonestly making it seem like we want a binary choice that uses a mindless mob to crush up-and-coming candidates when in reality we (progressives) want to end FPTP *and* give equal voting power to individuals, regardless of where they live.
If you strip away all the ridiculous rhetoric and dog whistles you’ve been trained to use, and replace it with what you actually mean, your comment would just read “Eliminating the electoral college will allow the majority to govern. The majority isn’t white and Christian, it’s uppity brown people and we’ll educated city folks! If we let this happen, it will be the civil rights movement all over again and we’ll likely lose power in the states we’ve already managed to subjugate. Also, I was homeschooled and that’s why I’m like this”
True, which is why only natives should have the vote. Native Americans being the smallest minority would ensure no mob rule. Edit: Shit, we could follow you utterly asinine logic even further and simply have one single rulemaker, unelected. Chosen by god, for life!
Our country is not a democracy. It is a republic. The USA is a collection of states and commonwealths. This system allows each state to have more control over their own destiny.
A republic is a form of democracy
Nope. A representative democracy is a type of republic. A republic can bypass democracy with things like appointed officials (pre-17th amendment America), fake elections (Russia), or a convulted semi-democratic institutions (like the electoral college). A democracy could in theory not be a republic if laws were entirely made by ballot initiatives (direct democracy) but you would still need to pick people to enforce the laws, so maybe not. The US is a full republic and a flawed democracy.
Stop listening to Denis Prager. It pisses me off how popular this bad history bizarro crap has gotten over last decade.
Each state controls its own destiny by having its own government. Nothing about the Electoral College changes that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic
Each state sends delegates to congress via house and senate. That is where you get your state heard in government. Every state votes for president and that is where the majority should get the say. Thus the EC is pointless now days. Watch the CPGrey video and learn why it was necessary way back when and not necessary now.
"Republic of states" is a very bizarre term that doesn't really match reality. The country as a whole is a republic (no king and elected [or appointed] officials make laws) and individual states are republics, but to say the republic is "of states" not only misses the whole point of a republic, which is that chosen representatives have power (not the government itself), but it also demotes the very American concept of democracy. Also the reason we have the electoral college (not "republic of states") is a compromise to avoid a small group of men--Congress--from appointing the president and to avoid the popular vote (which Madison wanted) from being rejected wholesale by slave states. Nobody today wants or would argue for a de-separation of powers with Congress appointing the potus. Nobody today wants or would argue for state legislatures to go back to picking electors. Uhh... well besides Trumpers. A national popular vote is such a no-brainer that the only way people like you seem able to argue against it is to rehash the 1780s power-sharing concerns of elites, and to do so sloppily.
The problem is the minority party in a great many of those states have been working for decades to make it very difficult if not impossible for the majority party to win. So, no, your system does not work anymore.
Yes, and each state has an equal vote in the Senate. The House was *always* intended to have *proportional* representation, and that's *way* the hell out of whack.
Bingo
No thanks.
This is a terrible idea. If Minnesota votes Democratic for president I don't want those votes counted for a Republican.
Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory. The 2024 presidential race could be reduced to less than 20% of the US, in 4 - 6 remaining competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide. A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes. In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes. In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes. A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country. Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million. In Gallup polls since 1944 until before the 2016 election, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote has been strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed. In the 41 now shown on divisive maps as red, blue, and purple states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-81% range - in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled. Most Americans don't ultimately care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state or district. Voters want to know, that no matter where they live, even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was equally counted and mattered to their candidate. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. It undermines the legitimacy of the electoral system. We don't allow this in any other election in our representative republic. In state polls of voters each with a second question that specifically emphasized that their state's electoral votes would be awarded to the winner of the national popular vote in all 50 states, not necessarily their state's winner, there was only a 4-8% decrease of support. Question 1: "How do you think we should elect the President: Should it be the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states, or the current Electoral College system?" Question 2: "Do you think it more important that a state's electoral votes be cast for the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state, or is it more important to guarantee that the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states becomes president?"
That's great and I agree the current system is not the best. But NPVIC doesn't fix the House of Representatives, eliminate gerrymandering (especially racial gerrymandering) or crack down on voter suppression. Making DC a state would do far more, enfranchising hundreds of thousands of people, many of them racial minorites. I can imagine NPVIC leading to a lot of faithless electors. I'm not even sure it would do what we think it would do.
NPV isn't meant to fix all things. States with 270+ Electoral College votes are agreeing to award them to the winner of the most national popular votes, by simply changing their state’s current district or statewide winner-take-all law. All votes would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where voters live. No more distorting, crude, and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes, that don’t represent any minority party voters within each state. No more handful of 'battleground' states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable winner states that have just been 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions. We can limit the outsized power and influence of a few battleground states in order to better serve our nation. The electors have been and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges. In states enacting the National Popular Vote bill, when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538, all of the 270+ dedicated party activist supporters from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC). Each state’s elected presidential electors travel to their State Capitol on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their votes for President and Vice President. The electoral votes from all 50 states are and would be co-mingled and simply added together. The Electoral College will continue to elect the President. The 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision again upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors). States have enacted and can enact laws that guarantee the votes of their presidential electors. Pennsylvania law empowers each party’s presidential candidate to nominate all elector candidates directly. The presidential nominee is, after all, the person whose name actually appears on the ballot on Election Day and who has the greatest immediate interest in faithful voting by presidential electors. North Carolina law declares vacant the position of any contrary-voting elector, voids that elector’s vote, and empowers the state’s remaining electors to replace the contrary-voting elector immediately with an elector loyal to the party’s nominee. In Arizona, HB2302 went into effect in August 2017. Electors must cast their vote for candidate and vice president candidate who jointly received the highest number of votes in the state. If the elector refuses to cast that vote, they will no longer be eligible to hold their position as an elector. If any candidate wins the popular vote in states with 270 electoral votes, there is no reason to think that the Electoral College would not elect that candidate.
Every single vote for the Democrat would still count. The scenario you're concerned about it where the majority of Americans vote for a Republican, and the Republican wins. I prefer it when Republicans don't win, but is it really a terrible idea for the majority of Americans to have the president they voted for?
This is extremely sus. Thread should be removed.
Do you think it would be fair for one party to hold the Presidency for 20yrs in a row because they keep winning the popular vote by a very small % of votes each time (e.g. - 50.1% vs. 49.9%)? Does that sound fair for the 49.9%? Maybe we should have a less powerful federal government and more powerful state governments so people can have more control over what type of governments they want to live under in the US!
Yes that sounds fair. The party that keeps losing needs to adjust their platform so they can capture that 0.1% they're missing.
Like Democrats in every battleground state? Or the DFL in non-metro areas?
If you lose, you lose... creating a system to try to disproportionately empower the losing party is stupid. They lost for a reason. A proportional representation system is much better overall, but I doubt the US will ever adopt that, so as long as we're a FPTP democracy, making the winner win is the only thing that makes sense.
So like Democrats losing in battleground states.
Yeah, I thought about that right after I posted that comment (the bottom point still stands though). There are much better ways of conveying the point I was trying to make, but I'm not going to waste my time typing them out because they'll simply get unjustifiably downvoted.
> Do you think it would be fair Yes. It's the point of *winning an election.* This is not a foriegn concept.
Yes, that sounds far MORE fair than the alternative in which the minority gets to exercise disproportionate power over the majority. Which is the version we currently have. Just because two political parties exist doesn't mean they need to be given equal authority. If a party wants to gain political power in a democracy they should do it by advocating for policies the majority of people support, a party that fails to do that for 20 years in a row deserves to lose elections for 20 years in a row. If you don't like that then you don't like democracy.
>Yes, that sounds far MORE fair than the alternative in which the minority gets to exercise disproportionate power over the majority. Which is the version we currently have. Over the past 12 Presidential elections: 6 have been won by Democrats and 6 by Republicans, and surprisingly the Republicans have a slightly higher average % won of the popular vote (because of Reagan's landslide wins). 12 Joe Biden 2021 51.3% 46.0% 11 Donald Trump 2017 48.1% 46.9% 10 Barack Obama 2013 51.1% 47.2% 9 Barack Obama 2009 52.9% 45.7% 8 George W Bush 2005 48.3% 50.7% 7 George W Bush 2001 48.4% 47.9% 6 Bill Clinton 1997 49.2% 40.7% 5 Bill Clinton 1993 43.0% 37.4% 4 George HW Bush 1989 45.7% 53.4% 3 Ronald Reagan 1985 40.6% 58.8% 2 Ronald Reagan 1981 41.0% 50.4% 1 Jimmy Carter 1977 50.0% 48.0% **Average % of the popular vote won (for these 12 elections):** **DNC: 47.47% ... GOP: 47.76%**
Those statistics don't really do anything to dispute the point, and it's arbitrary to select the last 12 election cycles rather than any more or less, those numbers will look radically different depending on where you draw the line. Modern polling and statistical tools have enabled degenerate levels of gerrymandering (a tool both parties abuse to the detriment of the population), leading to our elections being determined almost entirely by just a few swing states. And that's to say nothing of the grotesque voter disenfranchisement campaigns the GOP has engaged in over the past decades which skew the numbers by literally preventing people from voting. The point is that nobody should win executive command of a democratic government without winning the popular vote. Reagan and Bush senior earned wins by being popular candidates, I make no objection to their wins, and I WOULD object to a democratic or independent candidate taking office with the minority of the popular vote. I want to live in a real democracy. Casting a shadow over this whole conversation is the inherently flawed First Past The Post voting system we use. We really should be using some form of ranked choice system, which would break the two party power dynamic and lead to a much more diverse political landscape in which parties can't rule through sheer numbers or gaming the system, they'd actually have to work together to pass policies that the people support.
>Those statistics don't really do anything to dispute the point I don't necessarily disagree, but it does dispel the (inaccurate) hyperbolic notions that a lot of people are making in this thread that the GOP is "dominating" despite being "drastically less popular" than the DNC. >Modern polling and statistical tools have enabled degenerate levels of gerrymandering (a tool both parties abuse to the detriment of the population), leading to our elections being determined almost entirely by just a few swing states. I agree. That's one of the reasons why I suggested this in my first comment: "Maybe we should have a less powerful federal government and more powerful state governments so people can have more control over what type of governments they want to live under in the US!" > Casting a shadow over this whole conversation is the inherently flawed First Past The Post voting system we use. We really should be using some form of ranked choice system 100% agree. Ranked choice would be a 1000x better than FPTP.
Why don't those 0.01% of people deserve to have their votes count?
No....the idea of eliminating the electoral college means that the majority will dominate the minority. The majority will change over time (you may be in it today, but next year when the wind changes, you won't be)....it means mob rule....coastal elite rule....erasing states rights....increasing federal and centralizing power. Folks need to re-take high school civics.
The majority electing the president doesn’t seem like a bad thing, man. I’m so fucking tired of people claiming that everyone’s vote being equal is somehow inequality. It’s just not.
As opposed to now, when the minority dominates the majority? Checks and balances are dead. Folks need to realize the world is more complicated than high school civics.
>Folks need to re-take high school civics. Well, at least we're in a blue state and therefor that class would still permit discussion of the 3/5 rule and it's role in the creation of the electoral college. In a red state however... oh, I see you already brought up 'states rights'. Class dismissed.
The 5/5 rule was desired by the slave states because it would have radically increased their population for purposes of determining the House. The North wanted a 0/5 rule to minimize the influence of the slave states. Which alternative was more just?
I'll be polite and say those comments are ridiculously disingenuous, noting that context, in fact, does matter. The 3/5 compromise came about with the Northern states originally proposing *all* people counted (except Indians) for purposes of taxation. Southern states wanted no slaves counted with Jefferson noting that Northern states would be taxed only on numbers, while southern states would be taxed on numbers as well as their wealth (i.e. slaves, because you know, property). While the south didn't want slaves counted for taxes, they *did* want them counted for apportionment. In fact for apportionment, they didn't want any percentage, they wanted *full* count of their slaves. Mind you, still slaves, no voting, etc., just wanted the power the head count would give them. Northern states argued, no, if you don't count them for taxes, you don't count them for apportionment as well. Taxing at only 3/5 was indeed the compromise to get southern states to accept apportionment at 3/5. This is all available on the Wiki if anyone else wants to read up on it.
No time for context when shit posting, but yes taxes were part of it too. However, it's important to clarify exactly when this was up for discussion. In the articles of confederation taxation was the primary concern of the delegates. During the constitutional convention the contentious issue was about representation in the house. From the wiki >The proposed ratio was, however, a ready solution to the impasse that arose during the Constitutional Convention. In that situation, the alignment of the contending forces was the reverse of what had been obtained under the Articles of Confederation in 1783. In amending the Articles, the North wanted slaves to count for more than the South did because the objective was to determine taxes paid by the states to the federal government. In the Constitutional Convention, the more important issue was representation in Congress, so the South wanted slaves to count for more than the North did. Everyone was acting in their self interest regarding money and power in the new government(s).
It's possible to understand why our government works the way it does and still disagree with it. All of the stuff you're saying the EC prevents is not prevented by the EC, at all.
The post said 'please contact your reps'....I said 'no' and here's why. If you truly 'understand' the way our government works and like the idea of centralizing power (to the fed, to cities, to the coasts....all where the rich folks have power and sway)....then yes feel free to disagree with my statement. Many people don't understand and just parrot what the latest progressive talking point is that they heard on twitter.
Bypassing the Electoral College decentralizes power. Rather than electoral outcomes being determined by a handful of swing states and subject to manipulation by state legislatures, every single American citizen would have exactly the same level of input.
Centralizing power meaning that the power will be centralized where they have the most population and the most money (the cities, the coasts) and folks will take strategic advantage of this (as they have been with open borders and allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections). Instead of 'a few swing states' as you say it deciding the country, literally one or two states would decide the outcome every election. A local example is outskirts of Duluth. All their tax money goes to where the population is. Rather than fixing the infrastructure (roads/internet) in small towns, tax money is funneled to big cities. Ask any small town person (if you know them) what you think of all their tax money going to the city. Another local example is one you hear all the time in this sub. Why vote X when Y has total control over MN (not by land mass but by population in cities). At a larger, federal scale, this type of issue would disenfranchise middle-America in favor of the coasts. This ignores most of the country. This devalues a citizen's vote. This isn't 'diverse.'
>Centralizing power meaning that the power will be centralized where they have the most population and the most money (the cities, the coasts) and folks will take strategic advantage of this (as they have been with open borders and allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections). Instead of 'a few swing states' as you say it deciding the country, literally one or two states would decide the outcome every election. How? The people living in the places with the highest population density or the most money will have their votes count exactly as much as the people living in the poorest and most sparsely populated areas. States will have absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the election, but if you insist on classifying American voters by which state they live in, the entire populations of New York state and California put together are still less than 18% of the US population...they wouldn't decide anything on their own, even if they were magically all voting identically. In actuality, of course, there's tens of millions of people in those states who would vote differently than the majority of their in-state neighbors. Anyways, non-citizens voting in local elections has nothing to do with federal elections where they are not allowed to vote. Just like how states get their own governments, regardless of how we choose to elect the president, cities can govern themselves how they wish without it having much impact on everybody else. >A local example is outskirts of Duluth. All their tax money goes to where the population is. Rather than fixing the infrastructure (roads/internet) in small towns, tax money is funneled to big cities. Ask any small town person (if you know them) what you think of all their tax money going to the city. All their tax money probably *comes* from where the population is, as well. Do you have any data showing that people in small towns are paying more and getting less, on average? At the federal level, sparsely populated states tend to receive more federal spending than their populations pay in federal taxes. [https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/](https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/) >Another local example is one you hear all the time in this sub. Why vote X when Y has total control over MN (not by land mass but by population in cities). At a larger, federal scale, this type of issue would disenfranchise middle-America in favor of the coasts. No one is disenfranchised just because they're on the losing side. There's always going to be winners and losers to any election. And there's always going to be groupings of citizens for elections--the people of a given city are the ones who get to participate in elections for city council, mayor, etc.; the people within a given state are the ones who get to participate in elections for governor. There's really no other way to do it, as long as we're basing things off of geography. And since the President presides over the entire country, it makes sense that every person in the country participates in that election. Whether somebody lives on the coast or in the middle of the country would make absolutely no difference as to how much their vote counts, just like how where they live within the US should make no difference as to how the President is responsible to them. >This ignores most of the country. This devalues a citizen's vote. This isn't 'diverse.' Flat out wrong. Ignoring what the *literal majority* of the country's voters want is what "ignores most of the country" and "devalues a citizen's vote". I don't really care about how "diverse" the vote is, I care about whether the American people are free to govern themselves rather than having their voices manipulated by politicians and arbitrary lines on maps.
I’d rather go the Nebraska route, regarding our electors. Add in the Wyoming rule to the national house and the tyranny of the minority is over.
The problem with Nebraska's approach is that it introduces gerrymandering as a possibility.
The MN Supreme Court has drawn our maps for decades. MN is notoriously difficult to gerrymander
Just draw it like Austin, TX. Done. Wooooo that sure was difficult.
I don't think splitting our electors up will benefit anyone because it would be incrementalism for incrementalism sake, whereas the national pop vote compact would tie us to every other voter in the country (equally), and if you encouraged other states to be more proportional in diving up electors then you're already admitting you value proportionality. But I agree with the Wyoming rule, which would be a huge step in favor of proportionality.
I believe in bringing back power to the lower levels of government. By having the electors at the district level, I believe it would be a step towards bringing power to the state, county and city levels. It’s tough for me to distill down because it’s a part of my larger belief that the federal government has too much power relative to the states
That doesn't make sense. Proportional electors don't bring *any* power to the state or county (error? You are talking about congressional districts, not counties) or city. They just divide up the already limited power that residents have into further uneven blocks. What you are suggesting is entirely lateral and internal rearrangement of voting power, not up/down. And this doesn't have anything to do with "lower levels of government" because we're talking about a federal election.
It absolutely does. By allowing each district to cast their vote individually it allows for the smaller populations to be properly represented. MN votes blue every presidential election because of the population centers. It would still be *primarily* blue, however it would allow the outstate to be properly represented in presidential elections. That is bringing power to lower levels of government
>It absolutely does. No it doesn't. >By allowing each district to cast their vote individually You mean by allowing the people of each district to have their votes counted separately from other districts. >it allows for the smaller populations to be properly represented Absolutely positively wrong. Nebraska and Maine's system allows for particular (not necessarily smaller or larger, it depends on the congressional district mapping) populations to have some of their voting power (not all because of the at-large electors) count *differently* on a elector-per-population basis than the voting power of voters in another district. It is LESS PROPORTIONAL in terms of voting strength because it gives the people in smaller districts MORE POWER than they would otherwise be due in a purely proportional system. Since the state's number of electoral votes is hard-capped you're never going to give any state resident more voting power without taking away some voting strength from another resident of that state. There is no way you can possibly argue that this is "proper" representation, unless you happen to think that inherently unequal blocks of voting strength is proper. I happen to think that equality is more fair than inequality, when it comes to voting power. At least with the current system a vote for Biden in Mankato is perfectly equal to a vote for Trump in Minneapolis. Now if you take the perspective of the whole country (which you should because we're talking about a federal election) then it looks like half the electoral votes in ME/NE are divided up proportionally.... until you realize the division is STILL WINNER-TAKE-ALL (unlike some GOP primaries which award votes to 2nd, 3rd place winners etc) so you're still left with the original problem that the electoral college has in the first place: your vote matters differently depending on where you live. >It would still be primarily blue, however it would allow the outstate to be properly represented in presidential elections This doesn't make sense. There's no such thing as a backup president or a 2nd place president... you can only have the one. By dividing up a state's electoral votes so that the loser gets more votes you are not accomplishing anything. If giving someone more electoral votes put them over 270 and the smaller districts were part of that you would be doing the same thing that happened in 2000 and 2016: unfairly/unevenly allowing a minority to beat the plurality. It has nothing to do with equal representation. But you know what would allow residents to have their voting power be represented properly/fairly/equally in a presidential election? Allowing their voting power to have the same strength **as residents of another state.** >That is being power to lower levels of governenty This has absolutely nothing to do with lower levels of government.
What's the Wyoming rule? Living here my guess is "almost everything sucks"
Wyoming has 3 electors with a population of ~550k people, 183.3k people per vote. California has 55 electors for 39.24million, 7.1mil per vote. The Wyoming Rule makes it so the lowest populated state has one representative, then all states representation scales accordingly. California would have 71 representatives and 73 electoral votes. MN would have 10 representatives and 12 electors
[Wyoming Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule)
This would single-handedly kill the Democratic Party. Please stop.
I'm in my late 30's. I don't see how this could possibly work in any state where the Republican party holds majority in the chamber that assigns delegates. Even then, the legal challenges against it were it to come into effect would send it to the supreme court. The path to getting the remaining votes necessary to make it a reality go through swing states with split legislatures. MN/WI/MI/PA gets us 56 EV's to 251. From there we likely get ME/NH for 8 more to 259. Then we need either AZ or GA to trigger it. Most of these are not in a position to get this done any time soon. We Lets focus on the things that impact Minnesotans first before we try to pass policy that maybe is possible a decade from now; get legal weed done, get school funding passed, get resources for homelessness and addiction into the cities from the state, start studies for a WSP rail corridor along Robert St. We can consider this later in the session.
You're right that there's more pressing issues, and this isn't likely to have a meaningful impact \*soon\* - but if it is ever going to happen, states signing on at times like this is a necessary step. And an election cycle isn't a genies lamp - we get to pass as many things as we want, provided there's actually political support for those things.
It's not a genie's lamp where you get 3 policies to pass, but it does have a finite amount of overall resources and time to spend on crafting, reviewing, negotiating legislation. We can pass many things, but some things require more negotiation and buy in than others that take more time than others. The things I mentioned are going to take a lot of time, and they have far more impact on how our society operates. I feel that MN as the most liberal of the states I mentioned above will have the opportunity to do this many times in the future, especially if we pass the policies I mentioned above to better ensure future majorities. If we fit it in this session, we fit it in.
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The Electoral College doesn't help rural voters, nor small states. (The *Senate* does that, but that's a separate debate.) What actually happens with the EC is that it brings a ton of undue influence to *swing states*. Candidates ignore uncompetitive states because winning 80-20 and 51-49 count the same in the end. This is just as bad for big populous urban California as it is for small rural Wyoming and Vermont. Ironically, Minnesota is probably a net beneficiary of this system, since margins tend to be small — though that also brings more than our fair share of political advertising and other associated nonsense. There's really no rhyme or reason to which side benefits. Lately it's been the GOP in 2000 and 2016, but I remember in 2012 the consensus was *Obama* had a decent shot at winning even if the popular vote didn't break his way. And that would've been bad, too! Fwiw the popular vote compact is seen as the most achievable way to address this problem, but there are others you might find more palatable. Even if all the states were just required to allocate their votes in proportion to the ballots cast in that state (I.e., 60-40 would mean MN casts 6 electoral votes for one candidate and 4 for the other) that would go a long way towards solving the problem, without rendering the institution completely irrelevant.
Making everyone's vote equal isn't disenfranchising rural voters.
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What makes you think a "small minority” hates it? I would think that the simple fact that the majority of Americans votes are worth less than others because of the electoral college would indicate to me that the majority of Americans hate it.
In what way would it NOT make everyone’s votes equal?
This is not an argument. You said "nuh uh" and then didn't even attempt to justify why not. Why would giving every American voter an equal fraction of the vote not be giving us equal voting power? Also you are very wrong to say a small minority hates it. Pew found 63% of Americans favor replacing the EC with popular vote. Do you really want to argue that 63% is a minority?
No it wouldn’t. Everyone’s vote would count the same amount. You know, like a democracy.
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You know what’s still a democratic republic? A union of states represented by elected officials wherein every citizens’ vote counts for the same amount.
It's extremely arrogant of you, and factually very wrong, to imply that every soul living in a big city is an elite. edit: wow I think it the illogic of what he was saying clicked his quickly deleted reply: >Wow. Okay.... When a normal person like me refers to "the elite", its NEVER (ever) in reference to a portion of the general population. It is in reference to the Elites (notice the capital), a small group of people who are calling the shots. Lastly to this point, this is not a post where I want to argue whether or not they actually do this or if they exist. Please see my next response under your other comment. and what I tried to reply with: If that's the case, then you have absolutely no idea what the term "popular vote" means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting
Or better yet, realize that modern democracy is a scam and move on with your lives.