With their new trifectas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, Democrats could sign onto the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states give their electoral votes to whoever wins the nationwide popular vote. All five of those states haven’t yet signed; the 19 that have possess 222 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. The additional states would activate the Compact. Some states might decline, bellyaching over losing their place of prominence in picking the president, but that would be irritatingly myopic: of the five presidents who won while losing the popular vote, four were Republicans.
Talk about historic.
And Texas… what would it take for a state to back out of this? I imagine if a state signed onto this, and their leadership changed back, it would just be a switch flip to undo it.
Its true that its tenuous, reversible.
But if it could be activated and used even once, thats one Presidential term more in line with the people, than with anything else.
Its far from perfect, but it is a useful tool, a potential step toward a new kind of politics, where the backward empty states stop having their bonus pity handicap points, and thus an outsized ability to force their ignorance on the masses.
Franklin did dare us all to try and “keep it”, and I’d say we’d be fools not to make use of every legitimate method to do so.
Its a kind of hack, a way to do essentially a Constitutional Ammendment without actually doing one, but that can also be ‘repealed’ more easily than an Ammendment.
If you can use it, and well exploit the advantage… eventually, you can reshape the system.
No guarantees, but… its an opening, an opportunity.
Like any other State law, it would potentially vary by State. Could be as little as a new law passing, revoking the Compact agreement. But that’s generally all that sets the rules in the first place anyway, which is why it’s relatively easy to actually reform via this method in the first place. The Electoral College system was designed to be reformed directly by the States if necessary, it just hasn’t really been changed since it’s reason for existing in the first place was helping to ensure slave states still maintained more power than their fair share (like many other concessions made 200 years ago to appease them).
There’s a minimum threshold, but that doesn’t mean other states can’t join the Compact after it’s already active to further strengthen it. Quite a few States don’t really do much leading on their own, they kind of just join the big bandwagons.
That’s what I was afraid of. The phrase “nuke the electoral college” isn’t exactly true.
Maybe these states could put it up for vote as a state amendment or something. Getting buy in from the people would make it stronger.
If we can get it done once, we’re much closer to making it permanent.
It would only be a viable agreement as long as 270 electoral votes remained in the hands of Democrats. Realistically the way this would play out is that the first post-compact election would be mired in legal challenges, and then by the next election at least one state would probably pull out, having lost its Dem majority, and that would be the end of it until the next blue wave. But it could possibly be a bulwark for one presidential election.