I honestly don’t understand why we talk about eliminating the Electoral College when it literally requires some states to vote in favor of giving up their own power. In what economy of incentives is this even possible?
The most likely path at this point is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a collection of state legislative measures, state constitutional amendments, etc. aimed at using the electoral college against itself. The very short tldr is once >=270 electoral votes worth of states have passed something enacting it, all those states’ delegates will vote in line with the national popular vote regardless of how their individual state votes, forcing the popular vote winner to be president.
Whether or not it’ll survive judicial challenge if/when it gets to >=270 electoral votes worth of states is entirely unclear. In theory, there’s nothing they should be able to do about it, but SCOTUS has shown time and time again it doesn’t actually give a fuck about the constitution.
The problem isn’t that states have disproportionate power, and moreover the NPVC is a poor solution. The problem is that all but two states allocate their delegates in a winner-take-all manner, so that a candidate with only 51% of the vote gets all of the delegates.
The NPVC requires huge buy in to work because in nearly half of cases it doesn’t result it a person’s voting power represening their actual vote. Thus, no individual citizen has incentive to support it. If it ever gets enough support to take effect, as soon as a state ends up with its delegates going to a candidate the citizens of that state didn’t vote for, they’ll repeal it and it will end nationally due to the wording of the law.
The solution is for states to allocate delegates proportionally to the votes of its citizens. That’s what voting is all about. If that system were in place, then there would have been no elections with a mismatch between the college and popular vote. Every citizen has individual incentive for that system, more so than the current system or NPVC, and therefore you don’t need the group buy-in wording that the NPVC has. It can be achieved on a state-by-state basis, and it would only need a few states to operate this way to have an impact.
Someone is going to point out that there are details and some states want to be fought over for their small percentage to swing the state, but the fact is that this solves the problem, and overwhelmingly this has fewer barriers and weakenesses than NPVC. If you care about this, contact your state government to change how delgates are allocated.
It doesn’t require the handful of swing states to be onboard. It just requires the heavy hitters which are largely marginalized by the electoral college and some of the smaller deep left or right states which are also made pretty irrelevant in terms of campaigning even if they get a bit more influence
I honestly don’t understand why we talk about eliminating the Electoral College when it literally requires some states to vote in favor of giving up their own power. In what economy of incentives is this even possible?
The most likely path at this point is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a collection of state legislative measures, state constitutional amendments, etc. aimed at using the electoral college against itself. The very short tldr is once >=270 electoral votes worth of states have passed something enacting it, all those states’ delegates will vote in line with the national popular vote regardless of how their individual state votes, forcing the popular vote winner to be president.
Whether or not it’ll survive judicial challenge if/when it gets to >=270 electoral votes worth of states is entirely unclear. In theory, there’s nothing they should be able to do about it, but SCOTUS has shown time and time again it doesn’t actually give a fuck about the constitution.
The problem isn’t that states have disproportionate power, and moreover the NPVC is a poor solution. The problem is that all but two states allocate their delegates in a winner-take-all manner, so that a candidate with only 51% of the vote gets all of the delegates.
The NPVC requires huge buy in to work because in nearly half of cases it doesn’t result it a person’s voting power represening their actual vote. Thus, no individual citizen has incentive to support it. If it ever gets enough support to take effect, as soon as a state ends up with its delegates going to a candidate the citizens of that state didn’t vote for, they’ll repeal it and it will end nationally due to the wording of the law.
The solution is for states to allocate delegates proportionally to the votes of its citizens. That’s what voting is all about. If that system were in place, then there would have been no elections with a mismatch between the college and popular vote. Every citizen has individual incentive for that system, more so than the current system or NPVC, and therefore you don’t need the group buy-in wording that the NPVC has. It can be achieved on a state-by-state basis, and it would only need a few states to operate this way to have an impact.
Someone is going to point out that there are details and some states want to be fought over for their small percentage to swing the state, but the fact is that this solves the problem, and overwhelmingly this has fewer barriers and weakenesses than NPVC. If you care about this, contact your state government to change how delgates are allocated.
It doesn’t require the handful of swing states to be onboard. It just requires the heavy hitters which are largely marginalized by the electoral college and some of the smaller deep left or right states which are also made pretty irrelevant in terms of campaigning even if they get a bit more influence