
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete - car
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/us/electoral-college.html
======
hyperpape
There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some
people think that's bad, some people think it's good.

However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral
college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect
is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states
over all the rest.

If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your
vote is secure. Ditto for Vermont. But if you live in Ohio or Florida,
presidential candidates will spend all their time in your state, trying to get
your vote.

While you can concoct a semi-coherent case for rural voters needing special
protection, no one can explain why Ohio is more or less important than North
Carolina, or Florida than Texas.

[0] Which, if you're paying attention, is at least correlated with being
rural, but only partially--another lazy generalization that surrounds this
subject.

~~~
ShamelessC
I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely
shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g.
California) anyway?

~~~
TylerE
I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet.
This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER
see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.

~~~
rayiner
I totally underestimated the importance of visiting until I went to Iowa
earlier this month. (My wife went to high school and college there and we went
back for the state fair and some campaign events.) It shattered my East-coast
preconceptions about how elections work. Because of the caucus system,[1] you
actually have to meet people in person to encourage them to advocate for you
at the caucus. My wife got selfies with nearly every democratic candidate. I
met the mayor of New York at a Buffalo Wild Wings. (He was just there for a
snack, as were we.) You go to a diner with like 20 people and a presidential
candidate has to sit there and field rambling questions from 80 year old
ladies. It’s completely nuts, but the people who engage in the process (and
they are completely ordinary people) are incredibly committed to their role.

The other thing I came away with from the whole process is a newfound
appreciation for the “who would I like to have a beer with” factor. The issues
and policy proposals you read on the Internet don’t really matter—none of that
stuff will ever get through Congress. Being able to look the person in the
eye, and see how they carry themselves while shleping to half a dozen events
every day—that really makes an impression.

[1] In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, registered party members in a precinct
get together, discuss the candidates, take a first round vote where some
candidates are cut, discuss the candidates some more, and then take a final
vote.

~~~
rapind
"None of that stuff will get through Congress"

I have a different opinion. Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren have created
massive volunteer networks that do have a pretty big impact, like everywhere.
Obama had that too, but it was dismantled when he took office (insanity).
There's a good argument to say Obama would have been far more impactful had he
kept it going.

Sanders has no intention of shutting down his "revolution" (not my words)
whether he does or doesn't get the nomination. There's going to be some
serious pressure (like there already has) on congress in the years to come. I
don't think the same ol' same ol' will continue much longer.

I don't mean to be a fan boy, but it's pretty phenomenal what he / they have
done since 2016, and it resonates with a lot of people. CNN and MSNBC don't
talk about it too often, but it's very real.

Don't take my word for it though. Easily researched.

~~~
tptacek
It's a 50/50 country. It would be _alarming_ if, after one election, which
will at best be decided 60/40 in their favor, a radically different (from
their immediate predecessor) President was actually enable to enact their
agenda. The system we have is literally designed to prevent that thing from
happening. "Volunteer network" or not, Sanders isn't passing his agenda. If he
was serious about doing that, he'd stay in the Senate.

~~~
rapind
Let's agree to disagree. I actually think big _alarming_ changes are coming
(and have already happened). I'm just a Canuck though, and not out to convince
anyone. I'm really fascinated with the political changes I see happening (or
think I see happening at least).

~~~
caseysoftware
After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very
little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most
of the show.

If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of
them aren't new and some of them are decades old.

Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking
"why?"

~~~
noir_lord
> After 10 years in DC working in political circles, I can tell you that very
> little is actually changing. The giant, faceless bureaucracy still runs most
> of the show.

Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely
because you are inside the bubble?

A political equivalent to "let them eat cake".

As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give
somewhere soon at some point (and in a few other western democracies including
my own though I think the US is further down the pipe on this one).

~~~
caseysoftware
Valid line of reasoning but I'm 10 years out from that world specifically
because the bubble was/is ugly.

I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will
give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general
populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose
hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.

(And those other approaches aren't usually good.)

------
rayiner
Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The
original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who
wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect
the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using
the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real
purpose of the system is to add a layer of indirection to the election of the
President, where the states have a say in their capacity as states.

That layer of indirection continues to exist today. Article II provides that
“each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof
may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint
its electors, without a popular vote. (That would raise the importance of
state government elections, which might be a good thing.)

At the same time, that layer of indirection could exist even in a purely
proportional system. You could assign electoral votes based on population or
number of house members.

So the debate over getting rid of the electoral college actually involves two
different issues. Should the number of electors be proportional? And should we
reduce the independent status of the states even more by taking away their
intermediary role in electing the President?

~~~
gthaman
Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college,
secede.

To mess with the electoral college in this point in time - when its basically
49% vs 51% - and at such a level of divide in the country is not exactly a
testament to how empathetic the two sides are. It would be a disaster.

Everyone thinks Trump himself is the problem but this awful idea to change the
goalposts literally to win elections would do way more damage than Trump could
ever do but I guess it doesn't come in an 'easy to hate' package with agenda
serving talking points, etc.

I don't know where these idiots think this whole "OK - we'll follow these
laws, but not those" thing is going but it is incredibly damaging and at the
moment only one side is picking and choosing which laws to obey and not obey
(then writing publicly about it) but soon enough the other side will be
picking and choosing which laws to ignore.

Get your helmets on once we are on _that_ slippery slope.

~~~
pasquinelli
By your logic there can never be a suitable time for democratic reform. The
current political situation can only get worse until the united states becomes
more democratic or more authoritarian.

~~~
rayiner
That doesn’t follow. Even in recent history, most Presidents command large
electoral vote majorities. In my life time, 7 of 10 elections ended in a more
than 60-40 margin in the electoral college, including both Obama wins.

~~~
pasquinelli
What difference does that make? It's either moving the goal posts so your team
can win if they're out of power or it's entrenching your team's position if
they have power. Either way is an outrage to someone, and so any reform comes
at the wrong time.

I really don't see the point you're making.

~~~
rayiner
I took the OP’s argument to mean that, even if you can get a consensus that
the electoral college should be changed, people should hesitate to do so where
close races mean that the change will be outcome determinative for particular
races. My point is that we still routinely have candidates winning massive
electoral college majorities. If people otherwise were in agreement that a
change was warranted (note that more than 50% of republicans supported
abolishing the electoral college as recently as 2012), there are still
opportunities to change the system where it won’t change the result of the
current election.

------
WarDores
It's not about division of power between rural/urban or big states/small
states. The Electoral College is about buffering purely democratic power. The
President doesn't represent "the people." He/she represents the interests of
the states. The Legislative Branch represents the will of the people (most
directly through the House of Representatives). One of the biggest problems is
vesting too much power and importance in the Executive, which was never
intended. Throw the balance of power out of whack, and we get these
conversations (the President has to represent "the people" and therefore
should be elected by popular vote)

~~~
vturner
I wish someone with $$ would start plastering this message everywhere the
absurd "get rid of the elctoral college" debate comes up. We are not a
democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. We are a
federation of states that is supposed to have most of the control in their
region and sacrifice a little bit of control to the federal government for
purposes of defense and commerce. Your "democracy" should be your state
legislature, but sadly authoritarians of the past have taken that away.

~~~
dahart
Your argument seems confused to me, but maybe I don’t quite understand, can
you elaborate? We do have state level democracy. The electoral college’s
purpose is solely for presidential elections, not for local elections. Why
shouldn’t we have a democracy for presidential elections? Your reasons given
(local control) don’t apply to federal elections. Even with the electoral
college, we’re pretty close to democratic representation for president anyway,
and the discrepancy between what we have, a federal republic, and a pure
democracy doesn’t serve the same purpose that it used to. So why should we
keep it? Why is the proposal to get rid of the electoral college “absurd”?
What do you mean about authoritarians taking away state level democracy?

~~~
kd5bjo
The structure of the Federal government is fundamentally geared towards
mediating the relationships between the various states, as that was its
original purpose. Actual governance of the populace was the purview of state
government.

Over time, however, decisions about domestic law have increasingly been made
at the Federal level. At this point, the interstate commerce clause in the
Constitution is used to justify almost any regulation that the Federal
government wants to pass. When that doesn’t work, availability of Federal tax
money is made contingent on states aligning their laws with whatever national
policy is.

Also, the legislature has been ceding its rule-making authority to the
executive by passing broadly-worded legislation and leaving the details to
administrative rules committees that work for the executive.

I suspect that ‘vturner is suggesting the correct fix is to shift the overall
balance of power back towards the more democratic parts of government instead
of reforming the election process of the government’s chief clerk.

~~~
dahart
Thank you for the very reasonable and rational explanation! That does broaden
my interpretation of vturner’s comment.

Your comment seems broadly true and open minded as well. I have a couple of
questions, possibly from a devil’s advocate perspective, purely for the sake
of discussion because I’m curious:

When you say the government was originally geared to mediate the states and
that real governance was supposed to be states, what does the Supremacy Clause
in the constitution mean to you? It was there originally from the start, and
it declares the federal government the winner of conflicting state and federal
laws.

Second, while I am personally a fan of states’ rights in a bunch of specific
scenarios, it makes little sense to me to talk vaguely about who should be in
control of most laws without a specific list of regulations in mind. Where can
I find a list of federal laws that are broadly viewed to be overreach by most
people, that most people agree should be in state control?

Acknowledging that there is politics here, that it’s a fight over control, and
your point that the Federal government is leveraging tax money, is it possible
that the natural order of things is for laws to drift in the federal direction
anyway - as travel across state boundaries has become faster and faster, as
the internet blurs the lines, as state laws individually become closer
together, as we see more needs for consistent standards nationally, etc.? When
the constitution was written it took a minimum of _days_ to even communicate
with another state, let alone spend money, purchase goods, or visit. The
geographic, financial, and communication boundaries between states has
literally almost disappeared compared to what it used to be.

~~~
kd5bjo
Unfortunately, Aside from identifying general trends, I haven’t looked into
the issues enough to hold any strong opinions, nor am I in a position to cite
any specifics without significant research. I think you may be right about
increased interconnectedness naturally leading to a larger federal role in
everyday governance.

As far as the supremacy clause goes, it’s necessary for the treaty to work.
The states are agreeing to give up some of their sovereign rights to be
executed by the federal government instead, in the interests of the union. The
bulk of the Constitution describes exactly those rights that the states are
giving up, and this clause confirms that they can’t pass legislation to opt
out of individual federal decisions they don’t like that fall within those
bounds. Without it, the federal government would in practice only be able to
make suggestions— a situation that led to bankruptcy under the Articles of
Confederation.

I’m actually more concerned about the shift in power from the legislature to
the executive. As the role of the federal government has grown, it feels like
every executive agency has grown its own miniature legislature and judiciary
that are primarily beholden to the executive. Agency regulations are law, so
why aren’t they drafted and approved by an arm of the relevant congressional
committee?

------
peapicker
Firstly, I'm an independent - I actually have a great deal of issues with both
major parties. My concern with abandoning the college starts with this
observation:

Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if
divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the
Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an
election, it is likely to happen in a state where both parties hold some
power, rather than in a state controlled by one party. The Electoral college
system focuses a great deal of energy on states in this condition when an
election is close.

National Popular Vote (NPV) rewards states with high population - the higher
the turnout, the more power for that state. Additionally, under NPV, each
state would certify its own "national" vote total. What would happen when
there are charges of skullduggery? Would states really trust, with no power to
verify, other state’s returns?

I have other concerns as well but feel the EC system is superior. Just as an
observation, the parliamentary systems of the UK, Canada, Israel, (& others)
have the parliament elect the Prime Minister and likewise don't elect their
leaders by popular vote.

[edited: removing poor wording about 'lax laws', seems I implied things in a
FUD way that I didn't mean to]

~~~
sp527
Nothing you said provides an argument against equally weighting each citizen’s
vote at the federal level.

States have select powers over the federal government that are specifically
provided by our Constitution:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights).
When you vote in local elections, you are in effect in control of certain
outcomes within your state, as accorded by our Constitution.

The federal election determines representation for every single person in the
United States and, in part, how federal governmental power is exercised on
their behalf. There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any
particular state should have more or less say in such matters than those in
any other. The electoral college system is an absolute sham that deprives a
significant number of people of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to
fair representation at the federal level.

I’d welcome any well-formed argument to the contrary. I’ve yet to ever hear
one.

~~~
hnburnsy
> There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any particular state
> should have more or less say in such matters than those in any other.

So should we abolish the senate too? Not being snarky just wondering what
those who support NPV think.

~~~
chillwaves
Mitch McConnell represents 6.8M people in TN and he is the most powerful man
in the Senate, and one of the most powerful people in the country.

How difficult is it to corrupt a man like Mitch McConnell? How robust is our
system of representation when one senator holds so much power?

~~~
briznian
McConnell is from Kentucky

~~~
chillwaves
Thanks. Doesn't change the substance of my comment except that Kentucky has
even less people in it than TN.

------
mshirley
I want to point out this article was written in May, and is a bit out of date.
For example, Nevada (heavily mentioned in the article) never adopted the
National Popular Vote compact because the governor vetoed the bill after the
legislature passed it.

FiveThirtyEight published an article last week on the current state of the
compact: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-movement-to-skip-
th...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-movement-to-skip-the-
electoral-college-may-take-its-first-step-back/)

~~~
Izkata
> Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the
> National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats,

It kinda feels like this part keeps getting glossed over when people talk
about this. I don't think those signing on have really thought it through, and
are just reacting to the 2016 election results. Of course the party that lost
wants to change the system in a way that, that time, they may have ended up
winning - especially with all the open hate for Trump.

~~~
cosmobot
It's worth noting that the same thing happened to the Democrats in 2000, and
hadn't happened in the US at that point for over 100 years. Looked at from the
perspective of the Democratic party: they have won the popular vote 4 out of
the last 5 elections, but only won the presidency twice. It's not surprising
the party's frustration with the Electoral College would continue to grow.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote)

~~~
drak0n1c
Interestingly in 2008 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote to be the
Democratic Nominee but did not become the Nominee. The Democrats criticize the
EC, but also don't mind using a form of it internally.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presiden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries)

~~~
hannasanarion
Both of those are untrue.

Super delegates have never decided a Democratic primary, and Obama got more
votes in 2008 (the official tally excludes Washington, Michigan, and Florida,
who went for Obama but didnt publish vote tallies)

The delegate system is proportional, not winner-take-all, it is utterly unlike
the electoral college.

------
not_a_moth
An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't
have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be
accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the
only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority
population has shifted to larger urban centers.

People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of
life with different priorities (and different legislative interests),
shouldn't be totally shut out, should they? Even though I live in a giant
urban area, I wouldn't want to feel pressured to due so due to lack of
political stake if I move elsewhere.

~~~
thomascgalvin
The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much
power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy.

For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in
California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the
Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of
the people in California are represented.

"Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in
a tyranny of the minority. People are choosing to actively leave rural
communities and congregate in urban areas; this does not on its face mean that
their concerns have become less important.

Moreover, people congregating in urban areas tend to be center- and left-
leaning, so skewing the Presidential vote towards urban areas also results in
US politics _as a whole_ shifting to the right. It also results in a judiciary
that is more conservative than the population as a whole.

There are only eight _states_ in America that have more people than Los
Angeles _county_.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less
important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it
about their geography that makes their issues unimportant?

[1] [http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-
th...](http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-
electoral-college-74280)

[2]
[http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php](http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po04a.php)

~~~
mc32
This is somewhat balanced by representation in the other house of Congress.

It’s not only the US which has to balance rural vs urban electorates. Some are
even further down the spectrum like Japan where rural areas have even larger
influence than cities compared to other democracies.

But in a way it makes sense. Without people in the countryside the people in
the cities would have little to eat. Most countries go to some lengths to
ensure some modicum of food security/self-sufficiency.

~~~
illvm
It would be somewhat balanced if there wasn't a cap on the number of
representatives and there was 1 rep per N population. But that's not the case.
So even in the House there is an imbalance.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>On Tuesday, Nevada became the latest state to pass a bill that would grant
its electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote across the country, not
just in Nevada. The movement is the brainchild of John Koza, a co-founder of
National Popular Vote, an organization that is working to eliminate the
influence of the Electoral College.

I don't think this will survive constitutional challenge, because it is not
the voters of the state who are deciding how the state's electors are decided.
For example, would it be allowed for a swing state such as Florida which now
has a Republican governor and state legislature, to pass a law stating that
their state's electors would be allocated based on how Alabama votes? That
way, even if the Democratic candidate won a majority of votes in Florida, the
electors would still go to the Republican candidate if the Republican
candidate wins in Alabama.

~~~
twoodfin
It’s a shame most of these comments are debating the merits of the Electoral
College, skipping right past the much more interesting & relevant argument of
whether the NPV compact is constitutional.

I agree with you that it’s not. States can indeed choose electors with any
constitutional method they wish, but if they hold a statewide election, it has
to be a fair election or it will run afoul of the 14th Amendment.

~~~
hannasanarion
How is NPV "unfair"? It is more in the spirit of the 14th than the winner-
take-all system, where your vote means more or less depending on where you
live (which was a core part of the 14th amendment logic of Gore v Bush)

~~~
twoodfin
States don’t get to hold elections for statewide officials (e.g. electors)
where some votes are effectively discarded because of some fact external to
that state election. Adding up votes from other states isn’t materially
different in that regard than performing an augury.

For the same reason, the Western states couldn’t engage in a pact to elect
their governors by party slate (especially without triggering the interstate
compacts clause).

~~~
hannasanarion
And why not? The constitution says that the states can choose their electors
for President any way they see fit. They can be named directly in the law if
the legislature wanted them to: "Our Electors are Joe Bloggs, James Jameson,
and Person McPersonface". There is no constitutional limit on how a state can
choose its electors.

When states started switching from the original plan of "electoral districts"
to "winner-take-all", Hamilton and Madison decried it as contrary to the
spirit of the Constitution, but recognized that they couldn't do anything
about it because the text of the constitution says "in such Manner as the
Legislature thereof may direct", and Hamilton's amendment to strike that
clause and replace it with an explicit by-district electoral process failed.

------
CptFribble
The Electoral college exists because of slavery.

The original idea going into the Constitutional Convention was to have
Congress pick the president. A majority of delegates going into the Convention
supported this, but discarded it after debates established it would violate
the separation of powers.

The popular vote wasn't an option, however, because it would mean the southern
states with their large, non-voting slave populations would have vastly
reduced influence. The southern delegates would have never supported a popular
vote. Thus, the electoral college.

Madison wrote about it here:
[http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif](http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif)

~~~
twblalock
That page you linked
([http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif](http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif))
contains that argument from Madison followed by a non-slavery based argument
made by someone else.

To say that the electoral college exists "because of slavery" is an
oversimplification. It ignores the misgivings about a popular vote that are
mentioned in the page you linked, and it also ignores the desire of the state
governments to exert control over their representation in the Federal
government -- senators were not directly elected for the same reason.

If you want to point to part of the Constitution that exists purely because of
slavery, the 3/5 compromise is a better example. The decision to adopt an
electoral college was certainly influenced by complications introduced by
slavery, but there were a lot of other arguments in favor of an electoral
college that were persuasive at the time.

------
gfodor
I'm really confused about this because I don't understand the incentives
politicians have to adopt this in their own state. It clearly undermines their
state's power in national elections.

My (cynical) assumption is that this will be obeyed insofar as it helps bring
about the desired outcome by those in power. It will be disregarded if it
would shift the outcome in the other direction.

~~~
outside1234
Does it? What if there state votes for the popular winner and that popular
winner is not the winner?

Remember, this will work both ways - eventually we will have a democrat that
doesn't win the popular vote as well in the current system.

~~~
rootusrootus
It will only ever tip that way for a Democrat when Democrats become the party
of rural voters.

~~~
outside1234
Why? There are plenty of small democratic states too - Rhode Island, Hawaii,
etc. etc.

~~~
throwaway2048
They are vastly outnumbered by rural republican states.

------
cletus
The electoral college achieves one very useful function thats ignored by
everyone calling for its abolition in favour of the popular vote: it produces
a clear winner and contains the contagion of litigating and delegitimizing the
outcome of an election.

Think about this: there are a number of elections that have a very small
popular vote margin. What if this gets less than, say, 20,000? That's entirely
possible. In a strictly popular vote election, what's to stop each side from
scrounging up votes or invalidating votes in every county in the country?

The most contentious and litigated election is probably the 2000 election. The
electoral college contained those shenanigans to Florida alone (and largely to
Miami-Dade and Broward countries, specifically).

There are four main problems with the US election system as I see it:

1\. Voting needs to be mandatory. Americans who love "freedom" chafe against
this but optional voting undermines democracy. You can see this in the
organized efforts to suppress voting and disqualify voters by US political
parties.

2\. The US needs preferential voting. Third-party votes are otherwise largely
a waste.

3\. Paper ballots with optical recognition only. No punch cards, certainly no
electronic voting. You need the paper trail of actual ballots. This could be
filling in a ballot and validating it with a machine or using a machine to
print out a ballot. These have an exceptionally low error rate.

4\. Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for
elections an elected political position? This is the case in Florida, for
example. Likewise, you have the Senate majority holding up election reform
because of there is suspicion this will help the Democrats in the House who
passed it. Seriously, Mitch McConnell needs to go to jail.

5\. I'm fine with states being represented in the US system. The problem is
that this system was designed at a time when populations were rural and cities
were small. I don't think anyone predicted the disparity between ~40M people
in California and ~150k people in Vermont having 2 Senators each.

You'll note that none of these are having the popular vote. IMHO that's fixing
the wrong problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for
> elections an elected political position?

The alternative is that it's an appointed position. That won't be less
political.

~~~
cletus
Patenntly false. Chairman of the Federal Reserve is largely apolitical. Judges
have philosophies that tend to reflect the wishes of the President who
nominated them but other than that are largely independent.

Look at how other countries handle election. In Australia the Australian
Electoral Commission ("AEC") is responsible for running elections and I can
tell you that none of the problems with politicized elections that exist in
the US exist in Australia.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Very well. Appointed people are not _always_ political. I bet that an
appointed election supervisor would be political at least some of the time,
though. (Source: human nature.)

------
40four
I always hear people complain about the electoral college, but I've never once
heard a detailed, objective argument as to why they think a popular vote would
be a better system.

Friends I've talked to about just seem to default to a majority system because
it seems more 'fair', or its easier to understand? I dont know.

In the USA, I think we are conditioned to belive in the democratic process, so
I guess it feels 'natural' to just tally up the votes, & majority wins.

We've done it countless times in our personal lives. Anytime there's a
disagreement, or a group decision to be made, "Ok, lets vote on it". Majority
wins. Simple.

This is a fine & easy way to decide things in small groups, but is it really
the best way to decide something among 300 million?

I'm not convinced. I'm not saying the EC is perfect, I just suspect a simple
majority wins vote could cause other serious problems that are not immediately
obvious.

~~~
zhoujianfu
There’s a lot of reasons for it on the movements official site:

[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation)

~~~
40four
So after looking it over, the idea is to eliminate get rid of the 'winner take
all' system in the participating states. Seems fine to me. It's definitely
hard to argue for winner takes all electoral votes.

I'm not really a history guy, but I wonder why states decided to move in that
direction to begin with? Guess I'll have to look into it.

What I don't get is if there are this many states trying to push this idea,
why do they need a bill like this to do it. Why don't those states just take
it upon themselves to change their laws individually. What's stopping them
right now?

Moreover, it seems one of the main points is that the current system causes
candidates to only focus their campaign in a few battleground states. I'm
struggling to see how the National Popular Vote system would change this.
Maybe it would break up the current pattern, if so, I have a feeling another
similar pattern would emerge.

The battlegrounds would just shift. For example, it might just redistribute
the candidates focus to the greater metro areas where 2/3 of the population
lives, and republican/ democrat distributions are more even (according to the
site). If the city centers are strongly democrats, and rural strongly
republican, the I imagine the same problem emerging since those areas are a
'done deal'. Why would the candidates spend any resources there is there is no
chance of swaying them?

------
munk-a
The Connecticut Compromise is good and all, but I think it's about time we
discard it as an artifact of the days when communication was difficult and
states had expectations around operating as semi-autonomous bodies. States
used to be a strong identity tie than the nation but our general mindset has
shifted toward identifying as Americans before Delawareans.

~~~
human20190310
In a related anachronism...

> In [Republican CO State Senator Sonnenberg's] view, the Electoral College
> was created so that “people in rural areas did not get overrun by the
> masses.”

This can't be true since in 1790 (roughly the same time period the EC was
created), "the masses" were rural; at that point only about 5% of the
population was urban[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States)

~~~
Scramblejams
In the US they were rural. The founders and early lawmakers took much
inspiration from the histories and travails of other governments around the
world.

~~~
hannasanarion
Which were also predominantly rural. There was no country on earth with a
majority urban population until well into the 20th century.

~~~
Scramblejams
Nobody said cities needed a majority to inspire fear of the way they
concentrated political power.

The founders’ concerns about that are well-documented. A cursory search
yielded a decent starting point:
[https://www.planetizen.com/node/18841](https://www.planetizen.com/node/18841)

~~~
hannasanarion
And nowhere did the founders say that the electoral college was intended to
counteract it.

Unlike most people today trying to come up with justifications for an
obviously broken system, the founders knew that minority rule is worse than
majority rule.

In every document where the framers discuss "tyranny of the majority", it is
clear that their solution is not minority rule, it is _CONSENSUS_. That is why
the most important functions of government: constitutional changes,
impeachments, censorship, rule changes, and veto overrides, require
supermajorities.

You don't overcome tyranny of the majority by letting minorities win. That's
just regular tyranny.

------
pseingatl
It's in the Constitution. If you don't like the Constitution: \--amend it.
\--call for a Constitutional Convention. These are the agreed methods to
change the document. "End runs," state compacts and attempts to game the
system are unconstitutional and doomed.

~~~
hannasanarion
Winner take all is not in the constitution. When states started arranging
their elections this way in the early 1800s, the chief creators of the
Electoral College Madison and Hamilton, called it an abomination and sued, and
when that failed, tried to amend the constitution to get rid of winner-take-
all.

The constitution says that states can apportion their votes however they want.
If they want to give them to the national popular winner, that's their
prerogative.

------
Schnitz
The electoral college was just a kludge to allow elections before modern
instant long distance communication became a thing. The gold standard for
democracy was always "one person, one vote", but nowadays there's a lot of
people that consider their personal gain more important than being democratic
and those people (the Republican party mostly) will try to hang on to the
electoral college, no matter the cost apparently.

~~~
0xB31B1B
“The gold standard for democracy has always been one person one vote”: it’s
much more complicated than that. At least for US legal history, the idea of
“who has the right to vote” has changed significantly, from land owning white
males to citizens who haven’t committed felonies (and a few other exceptions
like residents of Puerto Rico or citizens who live abroad and a few more). If
you look even further back, Athens, the creator of democracy, would generally
view our government as oligarchy (rule by the few) as popular vote elections
were viewed as possible to be games/bought by the wealthy or connected. You
can see echoes of that in today’s politics with dynastic families (Clintons,
Bushes). To solve the problem, the Athenians employed the concept of “sortion”
or essentially a civil service lottery where the ruling council of the city
was chosen at random from all eligible citizens. A modern example of something
close to sortition today is Jury Duty.

~~~
baggy_trough
If the House was chosen randomly from the population, it would be a big
improvement.

------
zw123456
I have often thought that part of the rationale for the electoral college was
that in the 18th century they did not have the internet, TV, Radio, even
newspapers were pretty scarce. So it just wasn't all that practical for a
candidate to ride a horse around all 13 colonies to meet each voter. The
logical solution would have been to have a parliamentary system whereby the
congress would select the president for you. The problem there was that the
president would be beholden to the congress and you would lose some of the
checks and balance features because he would be less likely to veto something.
So they developed a "shadow congress" that did not have law making
responsibilities but sole purpose was to travel to Philadelphia or DC and hear
the speeches and so forth and select the president for you as your
representative.

Looking at it from this 18th century perspective highlights why it is
completely unnecessary today. Obviously the voter has many ways of getting to
know the positions of the candidates themselves and hence able to elect the
president directly. There is no need for it today.

~~~
fastball
On the other hand, the electoral college, like congress, gives actual weight
to the idea that a state is more than just the sum of its population, by
automatically getting two votes for being a state.

Whether or not _that_ is necessary is a different conversation from the
information dissemination purpose of the EC.

~~~
ianai
That isn’t a reason for a single state to be able to hold the entire progress
of the majority back.

~~~
fastball
How can a single state hold back progress in this case?

Individual states can apportion their EC votes however they want. 48/50 states
are all-or-nothing states (arguably the actual problem), which is decided at
the state level.

~~~
ianai
Mitch McConnell

~~~
fastball
Not sure I follow.

------
will_pseudonym
If people are up in arms about the electoral college giving small states
outsized influence, wait until they hear about the senate.

~~~
WarDores
That's the literal point of the Senate, though, to be fair.

~~~
will_pseudonym
Yes, and it's part of the point of the electoral college. It's a weighted
average of the number of congress members from your state*

*and also includes Washington D.C.

------
cgb223
Why cant states just give out percents of electoral votes based on who voted?

Example: Lets say CA has 10 Electoral Votes (for easy math) 60% vote Dem, 40%
vote Republican. California then Gives 6 Electoral Votes to the Democrat and 4
to the Republican instead of all 10 to the Democrat.

Feels like that would more fairly represent the voters of each state no?

~~~
sanxiyn
Yes, I also think this is the simplest way to make it more fair. States can do
this unilaterally without pact. That's why I feel the pact is not about
fairness.

~~~
hannasanarion
The pact is necessary because whoever changes the system first loses out on
influence. You never hear of presidential candidates appealing to Maine or
Nebraska. It only works if everyone does it together.

------
ultrablack
Most modern countries have similar systems, where smaller areas are
disproportionally represented in the legislative power. Its only when you
loose that is a problem?

~~~
hannasanarion
The President is not a legislative body.

------
larrydag
When looking at political methods I like to look a first principals from all
points of view.

Here is a conservative or traditionalist political point of view in favor of
the Electoral College

[https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/danger-attacks-electoral-
coll...](https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/danger-attacks-electoral-college/)

Here is a liberal or progressive point of view against the Electoral College

[https://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/the-case-
against-t...](https://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/the-case-against-the-
electoral-college/)

These are but two opinions. Politics is ultimately creating policy on opinions
from a large community.

------
tmux314
"Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by
voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." \- Justice Earl Warren

There's a long history of the US electoral system favoring rural areas over
urban areas. Typically, the courts had to intervene in order to remedy an
issue where clearly the legislature has a conflict of interest. The most
famous is Reynolds v Sims (1964), which stated that electoral districts of
state legislative chambers must be roughly equal in population [1].

Hopefully, we can see similar change happen in the Electoral College.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims)

------
paco_sinbad
Isn't it interesting that minority opinions matter and must be treated
equally, until your state has the minority of the population...

------
reaperducer
Up next: Abolishing the World Series. Make it one big, long game and count
only the total number of runs.

~~~
currymj
this is the cricket approach. baseball typically plays multi-game series
instead.

i agree in spirit though. i have long thought it would make sense to abolish
the playoffs. give the pennants to the teams with the best records. then, have
them play a 21-game World Series in the fall.

~~~
bdcravens
That's closer to how baseball used to be, but there were also less teams at
that time.

~~~
dwighttk
yeah, they never had 21 games, but the winningest team from each league played
in the World Series until 1969. They did have a few 9 game World Series, but
most were 7.

------
tgafpg
If this happens, Democrats will be very unhappy with how many Republicans
there are in Upstate New York, Southern Illinois and Rural California who's
vote now counts for something.

~~~
_bxg1
It'll mostly balance out I think, and even if it doesn't, that's hardly the
point

~~~
AnimalMuppet
No, it kind of is the point. Democrats aren't doing this because it's more
_fair_ , they're doing it because they think they'll win more elections.

~~~
_bxg1
But regardless of what forces are actually pushing for it, it is more fair.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Perhaps. But when I know that there are people with a partisan axe to grind
pushing for it, I think arguments for "fair" should be regarded with a certain
amount of skepticism...

~~~
zhoujianfu
The NPVIC board actually has more Republicans than Democrats on it.

[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about)

------
sokoloff
The electoral college also serves as a “firewall” of sorts to contain any
local election fraud to that state (such that the will of the voters in that
state is compromised, but the compromise doesn’t extend beyond that).

For all I care, CA could pick their votes out of a lotto machine and it
wouldn’t affect the power of my vote (as a non-CA resident). The fact that my
vote is meaningless (deep blue state) is a collateral issue, perhaps.

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
This is an interesting point. The EC provides a kind of process isolation, in
theory.

Election fraudsters and hackers hoping to control the outcome of an election
have to make big splashes in small ponds, so to speak. It seems intuitive
then, that their shenanigans are more likely to be noticed - and are at least
somewhat contained if they aren't.

If we're going down the "1 person, 1 vote" road, that isolation vanishes. No
more big splashes needed - only very small droplets in a vast, vast ocean.

------
bena
It's like we've been trying to destroy the electoral college almost since it's
inception. And every step makes it worse.

The electoral college was supposed to be a sort of bulwark between the public
and the highest office in the nation.

State governments choose their electors. Those electors are _supposed_ to be
tasked with choosing the best among the candidates for president and vice-
president.

But instead, state governments threw that decision to the public. Effectively
making the electoral college a proxy popularity vote for a state. And that's a
big fucking ask of any person. Choose the person who is capable of running the
country and making all these decisions, whose policies will guide your nation
to prosperity, etc.

Hell man, I'm just trying to get _my_ budget straight. Do I look like I have
time in between everything else I do to also seriously investigate every
single candidate? And I'm not a complete moron either. And I know I cannot
actually make a completely informed decision here. But I know complete morons.
And they get a vote just like me.

------
car
The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiatives website has a lot of good info and
background on the issue, and takes on the myths around it.

\-
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/)

Explanation - [https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation)

Myths - [https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/answering-
myths](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/answering-myths)

As for the compact being a partisan issue, losing the presidency despite
winning the popular vote can happen in either direction:

 _A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry
despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes._

Edit: C-SPAN interview with NPV co-founder John Koza from March 2019:

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?458502-6/washington-journal-
jo...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?458502-6/washington-journal-john-koza-
discusses-popular-vote-movement)

------
RyanAF7
No he isn't and he won't.

But, it's a good social engineering mechanism to discuss these issues so the
next gen and others who don't understand the US thanks to pop culture can
learn why the EC is important.

Repeal the 17th Amendment while you're at it and then increase the house reps
to 5000 and triple the senators.

Then we'll see how effective or profitable lobbying, campaign finance or
gerrymandering is.

------
quaquaqua1
For 32+ years, the fact is that the Democratic candidate has won the popular
vote 7 times in the last 8 elections.

I am not saying whether this is good or bad.

But, I think the two party system would crumble very quickly if the Electoral
College were removed, and something else would come into place instead.

Disclaimer: I do not vote despite being an American citizen. I am also an
anarchist.

~~~
AsyncAwait
If this means viable 3rd parties, am all for it.

~~~
quaquaqua1
Personally I think it does, and I also think it means that there would be a
spectrum shift among the candidates to more "left of center" positions.

For example I think you would still have a broad selection of candidates who
differ greatly on economic ideas. But, I think that social ideas that
currently are still being debated (abortion, church and state, drugs) would be
resolved. I am willing to estimate that maybe 70% of Americans agree on these
social issues, compared to economic issues being more 50/50.

------
akulbe
I could not be more opposed to the abolishment of the Electoral College. The
founders had a very good rationale for putting it in.

That said... I think there's a solution for this. Hard term limits for
everyone, in all the branches.

It already exists for the Executive branch. I think it should be instituted
for both Legislative and Judicial as well.

~~~
mikeash
The rationale for the EC and every other compromise in the Constitution was
simple: it’s what was required to get the states to actually sign up.

There was the very real possibility that the individual states would go their
own way if they didn’t like the proposed Constitution. Larger states could
have easily decided that they didn’t need to be part of a larger country.
Smaller states could have easily decided that they would be ruled by the
larger states and that they’d be better off independent.

The electoral college was needed to convince everyone to stick together. Same
with the different structures of the House and the Senate, the 3/5ths
compromise, and more.

Things are completely different now. There’s no realistic possibility that any
state will exit the union. The major purpose of so many elements of our
federal system is completely gone.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's fair. We have a set of rules, and the rationale for many of them is
gone. Therefore... what?

Throw them all out? If so, replace them with what? Worse: How do you get
everyone to _agree_ on what to replace them with?

As it turns out, there's a mechanism for getting everyone to agree, and to
prevent changes that everyone does not agree with (for certain values of
"everyone"): Amend the Constitution.

~~~
mikeash
It turns out that there’s another mechanism to accomplish this: a collection
of states adding up to a majority of electoral votes can agree to cast all of
their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Hence the subject of
the article.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't think it will "accomplish this", because it's too low a threshold.
This mechanism doesn't add up to "getting everyone to agree". It adds up to
"getting 50% + 1 of the electoral votes", which is not the same thing. It's
going to leave far too many people feeling bypassed and marginalized. In
today's political environment, those people might become problematic.

~~~
mikeash
Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to
change the rules.

At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the
ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that their
vote actually matters for once. And if they don’t, well, lots more people feel
bypassed and marginalized _now_.

If it’s a bad idea, what do you propose to do about it? The Constitution
allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to
> change the rules.

That too. This "compact" approach bugs me partly because it's a hack to get
around the appropriate way of doing this, which they know they can't get
enough support to do.

> The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.

That may be correct. But the Wikipedia article on this
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact))
indicates that the constitutionality is at least in question. I'd really like
to see the Supreme Court decide on the constitutionality of this approach
_before_ the first election where it would be in force.

~~~
mikeash
What makes it a hack, but amending the Constitution isn’t? I agree it feels
like one, but it is entirely above board. I’m sure the authors of the
Constitution didn’t anticipate states choosing to allocate their votes this
way, but they didn’t bother to specify how they could or couldn’t do it.

From the Wikipedia article, the only question I see is whether the agreement
requires Congress to approve it or not. There seems to be no question that the
agreement is allowed and would work.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
And, under current circumstances, do you see congressional approval to be
forthcoming? For myself, I rather doubt it.

[Edit: Why isn't amending the Constitution a hack? Because it's the recognized
mechanism for changing the rules.

What makes the compact a hack? I guess it _feels_ like a hack because the
expectation is that, if you're going to change the way the president gets
elected, you have to change the Constitution - and therefore having to
withstand the full level of scrutiny that such a change would involve.
Changing it within the parameters allowed - just barely - by the Constitution
is not technically a hack, legally. But it's still _feels like_ a hack to make
the change without as much scrutiny, and without the need for the massive
majority. At least, so it seems to me.]

~~~
mikeash
Right now, no. Next time the Democrats have control of both chambers, though,
it seems possible.

In any case, my point is just that a constitutional amendment isn’t required
and this is totally above-board. The odds of an amendment being ratified are
far lower.

------
squirrelicus
The electoral college was created to strike a balance between valuing a
diversity of perspectives and popularity of perspectives. The probability that
a geographically restricted monoculture gets it right is very close to zero.

~~~
hannasanarion
That's not what the electoral college does. It's a post-hoc justification your
high school teacher probably came up with on the fly, and you clearly haven't
thought about it critically since.

The only thing the electoral college does is give the voting power of local
minorities to local majorities.

3 million people in the state vote for A

4 million people in the state vote for B

B gets 7 million people's worth of electoral votes, A gets nothing. Repeat 47
times.

There is no explanation for this that makes sense. It wasn't designed this
way, it happened by accident. The framers tried to stop it in the 1790s and
1800s, but there was no political will: everybody wanted to exploit the
antidemocratic loophole in the constitution instead of fixing it.

~~~
squirrelicus
Woo there buddy, slow down there a gorsh durned second.

The nature of our republic and bicameral system is a recognition that both the
elites (in the form of states, in this case) and the population have important
things to contribute. If your fundamental theory of politics is that the elite
don't have anything extraordinary to contribute, then how about you start by
cleaning your own house and getting rid of superdelegates before you go on
trying to change the entire country to match your pet political power
distribution

------
markvdb
Use a condorcet method [0] to elect a US president that represents common
ground.

Needs of specific groups of people can be taken into account as transparent
supplementary conditions. Sparsely populated areas constitute one potential
parameter. Maybe the opinions of poor and ill people can also be taken into
account for while respecting their privacy.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method)

------
frankbreetz
I turned 30 this year,and the Republican candidate has won the popular vote
once in my life,and he was an incumbent. There has been a Republican president
14 of the 30 years of my life. Now,the first president of my life ( Bush 1)
won the popular vote before I was born, but if we don't count him, no
Republican has entered office with the popular vote in my life. Regardless of
political beliefs does this seem right to everyone?

~~~
philliphaydon
If you removed only California from the popular vote then Hillary lost. The
share number of people there still cause Hillary to get the popular vote. Is
it fair that 1 state has a controlling share over every other state?

~~~
hannasanarion
And if you remove Texas, Hillary would have won by an even larger margin.

What is your point?

~~~
philliphaydon
EC works as intended.

~~~
hannasanarion
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the people who designed it, called it
their greatest mistake, an abomination, and presented constitutional
amendments to abolish it in the 1800s.

------
Consultant32452
I'm interested in hearing arguments from anyone who genuinely believes that
California and New York are over all politically underprivileged.

~~~
zhoujianfu
Every non-swing state (including Texas and Wyoming) is when it comes to
electing the president.

------
fastball
[https://i.imgur.com/wpOIGxq.png](https://i.imgur.com/wpOIGxq.png)

That's a nice number of comments.

------
achenatx
Right or wrong, the only thing that matters is the constitution.

It is easy to imagine that a purely democratic system would be better, but I
find it easy to imagine that it would be substantially worse.

The founding fathers rightly believed that most people were ignorant and
relatively stupid so the people vote for the house, but senators and electors
were appointed.

The agreement to get small states to join was that they would have an equal
number of senators. If you want a different system change the constitution. Im
skeptical that a democratic system would be better.

They setup the system to be a collection of states with a weak federal govt
with limited power. The federal govt over time has taken more and more power
from the states.

When california joined the union it had 33X less population than the most
populous state (new york). Californians were happy to have the
overrepresentation when it benefitted them.

Overall a strongly federal system is worse than a system where 50 states each
try something different. In a 50 state system we get many chances to find the
best policies. For example when marijuana is illegal at the federal level the
antis predicted wholesale mayhem. There was no way to test to see what would
happen until some states defied federal law. Once one state showed that it was
fine others could come on board.

The same goes for open carry. Antis claimed there would massive increases in
crime and shootings. It turns out not to be the case.

~~~
throwaway827364
My problem with the electoral college is that it doesn’t seem to matter who I
vote for or which way my state goes.

The election comes down to some key battleground states, which is where the
candidates spend the vast majority of their time campaigning.

The constitution shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. The men who wrote that
document were flawed just like any other human. Many of them owner slaves. I’m
not saying we should disregard our laws but I am saying we should keep an open
mind to amending the constitution as needed.

------
chkaloon
> "Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Texas
> at Austin, is sharply critical of the Electoral College system, but does not
> believe the interstate pact would solve all of the problems inherent to
> America’s election design."

Same argument as we can't try any gun restrictions because none of them will
stop all shootings.

------
wmgries
What if Congress revoked all (or nearly all) implicitly and explicitly
delegated powers to the Executive? The jockeying over who runs for President
and how we elect them always seems to miss the point that the modern Executive
is much too powerful.

Make the Presidency weaker, and then let's have this discussion about how we
elect them.

------
EGreg
In much more recent news:

[https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/faithless-
elector-a-...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/faithless-elector-a-
court-ruling-just-changed-how-we-pick-our-president/)

------
freen
About the same number of people live in public housing in NYC as Wyoming.

Either land area matters or people matter.

Choose.

------
amaccuish
Questions like this push me more and more to the idea that places like China
have got governance nailed. Why bother about all this? It's disorder for
little gain.

------
lolsal
Every time this debate comes up I can't help but wonder if we are letting the
office of the president have too much power. To over-simplify a bit: the
president should be executing the will of Congress, right?

------
rootusrootus
This article is from May. Oregon has since joined, becoming the 16th state to
do so.

~~~
5555624
The current number is 15. Nevada didn't join. Although passed by the Assembly
and the Senate, the Governor vetoed it.

------
will4274
The electoral college is a fault domain for voter fraud, and scaler to
mitigate differences in voter accessibility, which cannot otherwise be fully
mitigated given differences in geography.

------
mythrwy
I'd be curious how this holds up to court challenges because it seems like a
deliberate circumvention of the constitution.

Not that the current system is completely equitable.

------
tedmcory77
Democratic candidates have won the popular vote 4/5 times in the most re ent
elections, but only won the Presidency 2/5\. That’s an issue.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Teams with the most yards lose some football games, too. Is that an issue?

Run to win the election under the rules that are in force.

~~~
gnulinux
This does not make any sense to me. Elections is not a game, it is people's
inalienable right to have equal representation compared to others. If
politicians decide that State X doesn't matter since it's not powerful with
respect to EC, this is blatantly undemocratic and needs to be fixed asap.

------
ur-whale
The real core issue is the president and the federal govt has way too much
power. There is no reason why a centralized authority should decide on policy
for both rural and urban communities and for states as deeply different as
Louisiana and Washington state.

If political power was surrendered back down to where it naturally belongs,
i.e. to the state, or even better to the city level, and the fed was stripped
and left with little to no political power, this whole electoral college
charade would become entirely moot.

------
ananonymoususer
Obviously only the "blue" states want this change. Fortunately there are more
"red" states than blue states, so the original purpose of the electoral
collage, as created by the founding fathers, will be preserved. Otherwise we
would be in "tyranny of the majority" mode, which we are anyway, but at least
not with regard to presidential elections.

~~~
zhoujianfu
It’s really not a blue state vs red state thing as much as a swing state vs
non-swing state thing. Right now it’s more blue because trump is in power, but
if democrats take the White House (and especially if it’s without winning the
popular vote), red states will be jumping on the bandwagon. Before 2016 red
states were terrified of the electoral college “blue wall” and many were very
close to joining the compact before the 2016 election made it politically
infeasible.

------
shmerl
Another thing to abolish - winner-takes-all system, which prevents wider
parties variety.

~~~
chrisseaton
Would you have multiple presidents? How would you break their roles up? Which
one gets the nuclear code or do they all?

~~~
jjeaff
Winner takes all refers to the fact that in most states, the winning candidate
gets 100% of the electoral college votes. Even though the candidate may have
gotten just 50% plus 1 of the votes.

This is the main reason a popular vote winner can still lose.

You could be the 51% winner in most states but lose by nearly 100% in the more
populous states and still win. Which is why this keeps happening to Democrats.
They win by landslides in NY and CA but then eek out a loss in some of the
swing States.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't understand how you can have all electors voting for the national
popular winner, and also somehow not have first-past-the-post?

~~~
shmerl
"Winner takes all" problem refers to the Congress, not presidential elections.

------
bensonn
1\. Even if NPV is a good idea, this is the wrong way to do it. Doing it the
wrong way means legal chaos. Doing it the wrong way means it can probably be
undone or made worse the wrong way.

2\. George Mason vs. Elisabeth Warren. James Madison vs. Jay Inslee. These
match-ups aren't even close.

3\. I don't think the results will match the intentions.

For point 1 this seems like parts of Obamacare. Whether you support it or not,
enforcing/creating parts of it via executive order means it can be
unenforced/dismantled via executive order. This isn't a direct comparison, my
point, if you base something on legally weak and questionable methods you will
end up with weak and questionable outcomes.

Another way I look at point 2, can Justin Beiber rewrite Mozart and improve
upon it? There are very few political intellectuals I would put on par with
the founding fathers, and sadly most of those are not politicians. The
founders' system has worked very well for centuries, the USofA has faults
sure, but from ragtag rebel colonies to world super-power, this part is
working fine. We have many problems, isolate the variables, I don't think the
EC is the cause.

Point 3, this is mostly a party issue, Democrats support it, Republicans do
not. Of the 16 states to pass it through legislature 15 had Democrat
governors, the single Republican governor vetoed. I think it is safe to say
the elections of Bush and Trump, without winning the popular vote, are the big
driving factors for the NPV. I don't think NPV will have the intended effect.
I think people are wrongly taking new rules and applying old stats but if you
change the rules of the game you can't expect players (candidates and voters)
to play with old strategies. A lot more Republicans will show up to vote in
solidly blue states where currently voting for an R is a waste of time.

------
cabaalis
The United States bases way too much of its identity on who is its president.

~~~
hannasanarion
Because the United States invests way too much power in who is President.

------
_bxg1
> Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican state senator in Colorado who opposed the
> bill, said he believed the change would weaken the electoral power of
> sparsely populated rural states like Wyoming and Utah, while strengthening
> states like California and New York.

States. Are. Not. People.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
No. But states' representatives will often work together across party lines to
try to do something that benefits the state. "Political power of a state" is
not a totally idiotic concept.

------
whenanother
the electoral college system has become a scam to give the presidential
election to the wealthy. they can, during the election year establish
residency in the swing states and in affect have more of a say as to who
becomes president. people here claiming that it gives the rural population
more of a say, that's a lot of bs. with national popular vote the urban and
rural states will have just as much of a say as each vote will count for one
vote. none of this crap of increasing the representative count and taking
advantage of the numbers being rounded in favor of one party vs the other. now
if a party wants to rig the election, they will have a much harder time.

------
smsm42
Wake me up when it's 35 states. Before that, it's just a political stunt -
blue states promise to vote for popular vote winner, thinking it would be a
Democrat, which they'd be voting for anyway.

------
JackFr
It's quite likely that without the electoral college, Donald Trump would have
won the popular vote. Republican turnout in NY is terrible for presidential
elections, because they all know there vote won't matter. Registered Democrats
out number Republicans in NY by more than 2 to 1, and yet there are more
Republicans in NY that there are people in New Mexico and Vermont combined.

It's definitely not a given, but predicting what would happen is not a clear
exercise. You can't change the rules without changing peoples behavior.

------
jacobsimon
You misspelled obsolete :)

------
sabana
How is this tech related?

------
remarkEon
Most of these comments are about the structural issues with the electoral
college.

I’m not really concerned about that. What concerns me is this insistence that
a popular vote for President in a country of 350M people is a good idea. Does
anyone actually believe this? The executive branch these days has essentially
become a proxy for what laws one wants passed, and you end up voting
accordingly. This might be fine, if the results were restricted to being local
- and by the way, the original design of this country accented on exactly that
point. But we don’t live in that country anymore, I guess. Now we want more
democracy, all the time.

So I find it really hard to believe that introducing _more_ “democracy” in a
nation as divided and diverse as this one is a good idea. This, I thought, was
supposed to be one of the reasons that people wanted to move here ... the
whole Federalism thing. Taxes can be different between states. So can Social
policy. The extension of this is of course the Electoral College.

Spare me the criticism of “slippery slope” but getting rid of the Electoral
College seems like we’d be on the road to a government “of the majority, by
the majority, and for the majority”. That is categorically absurd, at least in
my view.

The cynic in me says that the only reason we’re even talking about this is
because Trump won in 2016 via the EC. Sure. He did. And Clinton won the
“popular vote” because of LA, SF, and NYC.

For those in SF (or whatever proxy): do you want folks in Sioux Falls or Fargo
making your economic and social policy? No? I didn’t think so. So why is it
okay to institute the reverse?

The point I’m trying to make here is this country, as diverse as it is, is
best run as a distributed network. And centralizing the election of the
Executive into a singular popular vote will help destroy what’s left of that
network.

------
m0zg
News flash: Trump would still have won, just with a different campaign
strategy and a different platform. Promise a little more of what CA and NY
want, and a little less of what everybody else wants, and he'd get the popular
vote, too.

In fact I think this would make it _easier_ for a populist to win, not harder,
because all they'd have to worry about is crafting a campaign message that
resonates with the majority and portrays their opponent as Satan in the flesh.

~~~
outside1234
I mean, if he had won the popular vote, then fine, he is the winner.

All this is asking is 1 person 1 vote.

~~~
m0zg
This would lead to e.g. Wyoming being run by California though. I'm sure
Wyomingites would totally love that.

~~~
outside1234
Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your point.

If you are saying that each person in Wyoming would have 1 vote towards the
presidency and each person in California would have 1 vote towards the
presidency, then I agree.

~~~
felipemnoa
>>Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your
point.

It means that California would have more influence at the federal level than
it does now. And since federal laws apply to all states it means that
indirectly California would have more influence on Wyoming.

~~~
Taniwha
so? California has more people - it should have influence proportional to it's
population - remember that in most states (except for Wyoming) electoral
college votes are dominated by house seats (which are proportional to
population).

~~~
m0zg
If you want the US to stay whole, that's a big problem. Technically states can
secede, or form a separate union if they so desire. That's also why Senate
representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I suspect that'd be the
next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this actually succeeds.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Technically states can secede, mlor form a separate union if they so desire.

 _Technically_ , they can't. There is no provision for secession in the US
Constitution.

 _Practically_ , well, the one notable attempt didn't work out, so not that,
either.

> That's also why Senate representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I
> suspect that'd be the next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this
> actually succeeds.

Well, you can't do that through coordinated state action.

Or even a Constitutional amendment. Maybe two amendments, because the
provision prohibiting amendments which alter the equal representation in the
Senate isn't itself explicitly protected the same way. Of course, small states
can easily block a Constitutional amendment, so that's not going to happen
unless they are on board.

~~~
m0zg
>> There is no provision for secession in the US Constitution.

There's no provision forbidding secession either, so they technically very
much can. All that's not forbidden is allowed.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There's no provision forbidding secession either

The Article IV Sec. 4 guarantee cannot be interpret as even coherent if a
state can secede; once a state is admitted to the union, he federal government
is irrevocably obligated to preserve it as a subject and republican
government; if a state government could escape this oversight by secession,
the guarantee would be empty.

Further, there is ample historical evidence that the idea of reserving the
right to secede when ratifying was raised by New York, and rejected because it
was understood that it would be viewed by the Congress as an inconsistent
condition attached to ratification and thereby nullify the ratificstion.

The Supreme Court has also ruled on the issue, in _Texas v. White_. So your
concept of a right to secession is inconsistent with the text, historical
evidence of intent and case law of the Constitution.

~~~
m0zg
>> Article IV Sec. 4

Says literally nothing about secession.

------
sevenf0ur
The democrats crucified Trump in 2016 for not accepting the outcome of the
election. Today they want to amend the constitution to abolish the electoral
college. Maybe it's a good thing that we can't change these things on a whim.

~~~
clintonb
This campaign doesn't require changing the constitution. States can decide how
to divide their electors, which is exactly what is going on here. See
[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-
explanation](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation).

------
PorterDuff
re: California

It's also worth considering the distortions that illegal aliens put on
electoral college numbers.

~~~
hannasanarion
If there was any evidence at all, the administration would have presented it.

------
gamechangr
Wouldn't that push housing up in big cities?

------
crb002
This is absurd populism. IMHO electoral college votes should come from US
House district winners instead of winner takes all.

~~~
bdcravens
Probably a move in the right direction, but then the issues of gerrymandering
come into play.

------
garrickvanburen
My issue with the electoral college is that winner take all - rather than each
electoral vote being counted and rolled up, only the winner is. There are a
couple states that do this, I’d like to see the others adopt this.

------
ryanmarsh
Anyone proposing this is doing so in the blind. Nobody knows how this would
change the complex executive and legislative systems we have. Nobody could
know, for decades. So why the confidence that this is the right thing to do?

------
huffmsa
1) the presidency has grown too powerful and imperial with a bureaucracy so
massive the Qing emperor would be jealous.

2) 15 States can do what they want, but unless they meet the provisions in
Article 5, the college is here to stay.

Thank goodness the Framers had the foresight to include the process for
amending the Constitution in the document.

~~~
hannasanarion
The states have the absolute right to assign their electors as they see fit.

The framers intended for them to be locally elected or proportional, like
Maine and Nebraska today.

~~~
huffmsa
Oh I know. There is no Federal notion of a popular vote for the presidency.
It's entirely up to each state how they wish to nominate their Electors.

------
baggy_trough
Let's imagine a state signs this and is a tipping point state for the
presidential election. If this compact has any effect, it will be for the
state's electors to vote against the popular vote in that state, resulting in
the election of the undesired president according to the state's voters.

Nothing wrong with that constitutionally, but I suspect the politicians will
feel differently after the voters express their opinion of the matter.

~~~
jeremysalwen
If this actually does pass the tipping point, nobody will even be counting
electors any more, they will only be counting the popular vote. The electors
will be considered just a formality.

~~~
pwinnski
Vote counts will still be reported at every level, but electors will all cast
their votes for the national popular vote winner.

It will be easy enough to note which states' vote counts favor candidate B,
despite the national popular vote favoring candidate A.

As parent says, that's the design, but I'm sure there will be upset people in
those states.

~~~
dragonwriter
> As parent says, that's the design, but I'm sure there will be upset people
> in those states.

There are people upset with the plurality winner getting all the states votes,
too.

~~~
baddox
Not to mention a plurality of voters in _the entire country_ in 2000 and 2016.

------
innocentoldguy
This is stupid. The entire point of the electoral college is to ensure small
states have a say and the country isn’t ruled by the majority mob. Small
states would have to be pretty ignorant to make themselves irrelevant like
that.

~~~
jeanperrot
Are you thinking of the US Senate? The electoral college is not meant to give
a proportionally larger weight to small states.

~~~
bdcravens
Except it does. Smaller states do get more votes per capita than larger
states.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Advantage_based_on_state_population)

------
033803throwaway
If trump is re-elected it may be the last time a republican wins a
presidential election in the current system, due to demographic changes in key
states (FL, TX, NC, etc.)

If the electoral college is abolished, it could actually end up getting
another few republicans elected, since it would incentivize republican turnout
in solidly democratic states like California.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I doubt it. The Republicans will just have to move their platform just enough
to the left to appeal to whichever state has the 270th vote.

~~~
whenchamenia
The left has gone so authoritarian they may not have to. Left and right are
illusion. Freedom and despotism are what you experince as a citizen.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
All right, the Republicans have to move their position just enough to appeal
to the median electoral vote _just a bit more_ than the Democrats do. If the
Democrats go full off-the-deep-end leftist (as seen by the bulk of the
voters), then the Republicans may not have to move at all.

------
crusso
The states agreed to the Constitution with the Electoral College provision. If
there's national will to change it, it should be through the amendment process
described in the Constitution.

Having some states band together to subvert the intention of the EC
fundamentally breaks the compact of the Constitution. What is the authority of
a President chosen through subversion of the Constitution?

~~~
sanxiyn
Constitution does not specify how states should implement EC. In fact, Maine
and Nebraska do not use winner-take-all used by other states.

------
waynecochran
Great. With no electoral college, Wyoming would have 1.44% of the weight
California would have towards who was elected. The only thing keeping Wyoming
in the Union would be their two senators. Maybe then Wyoming folks should have
to pay 1.44% of the Federal Income Tax that Californians pay.

Campaigning for President? Just go to New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix,
and maybe a few other cities.

Maybe city folks can start making their own food while they're at it.

~~~
georgeecollins
Guess what? Wyoming pays less than 1.07% <1> of the federal income tax that
California does so you have gotten your wish.

Also California grows about 100x <2> the food of Wyoming so yeah we can eat
our own food, thank you.

The most important reason the electoral college was invented was so that
states with large slave populations could count 60% of them for representation
without actually giving them the vote. You don't hear about it that much
anymore for obvious reasons.

<1>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state)

<2> [https://www.farmprogress.com/management/what-us-states-
produ...](https://www.farmprogress.com/management/what-us-states-produce-most-
food-ranking-1-50)

~~~
waynecochran
Nice response. With actual data. Of course I am not sure the folks in the San
Jaoquin Valley (who produce all that food) would be colored blue if they were
an independent state.

I don't buy the slave argument -- I think the electoral college was created
for the same reason we have two senators per state. Of course those states
with large slave populations would have been colored blue, but that is another
history folks ignore.

~~~
georgeecollins
And if the San Jaoquin Valley became its own state conservative votes in San
Jaoquin valley and San Fransico would count more if they were seperate states.
Which is the whole point. It's telling that my point about economics and
representation got turned into a blue / red thing.

>> I don't buy that slave arguement.. And you are a historian? The slave
states that were large like Virginia wanted the electoral college,
contradicting your argument.

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-
slav...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/electoral-college-slavery-
constitution) [https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-
slavery](https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/electoral-
college...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/electoral-college-
slavery.html)

~~~
waynecochran
It seems the electoral college was exploited by slave owners, but what I
challenge is that is was created for that purpose. It articles see the
electoral college was a vestige of slavery, but that does not seem like a
reasonable conclusion. The sources you give all have a serious bias and a
vested interest in seeing the electoral college disbanded.

~~~
georgeecollins
It was supported by the largest state at the time, so the idea that it was
created to "help small states" makes no sense. It served that purpose but that
is not why it was made.

You provide no evidence and when I site sources you say they are biased. If
you believe the sources are biased please note that they site books, experts
etc. If you just reject every piece of evidence you will always be right.

------
cybersnowflake
I wonder how many people arguing for the abolishment of the EC would like it
if India and China automatically had the most votes in whatever supranational
government arises in the future and got to decide everything that happened
across the world. The US is still supposed to be a federation. The EC was part
of the deal the US made with smaller states to become part of the Union
precisely because they were afraid of being drowned out by the big states.
Don't like it? Convince the smaller states. Might not be that hard. There are
plenty of dumb people in the smaller states willing to permanently consign
their land to irrelevance because they don't like a President who's going to
be gone in a handful of years.

~~~
komali2
That only matters if our international government gets an elected god emperor.

The president is one of three branches of government. Congress/Senate balances
the power across states.

------
Spooky23
I think this is both a dumb move and unconstitutional.

Present day politics aside, allowing for pure demographic voting in this day
and age is even more dangerous than it was in the early days of the republic.

States and regions have different needs that need to be considered in the
governance of the nation. You can already see warning signs, the Democratic
Party platform has been so brain dead, they even managed to marginalize union
voters. Kansas and Wisconsin were progressive strongholds.

Changing the way we count isn’t a fix for that issue — fixing how candidates
and parties approach the people is. A more productive approach would be to
reduce the carnival nature of the election process... candidates shouldn’t be
picked based on their ability to shuck and jive in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Direct popular vote is basically a beacon for reactionary politics. It’s easy
to churn out old people to vote.

~~~
lonelappde
What is unconstitutional about a state using its constitutional authority to
cast its votes for President?

Why should fictional state borders take precedence over actual humans when
allocating voting blocs? If different states have difference needs, then those
states residents will vote for leaders who serve them.

Your problem seems to be that that giving supreme power to an arbitrary
majority is flawed. And it surely is. But giving supreme power to an arbitrary
_minority_ is surely as bad or worse.

Old people live in every state.

If you have a problem with old people exercising their sacred voting right too
much, surely the solution is to enable young people to vote, not give rural
state citizens extra vote weight?

~~~
Spooky23
Don’t put words in my mouth.

My problem is that this is a solution looking for a problem. In fact, it’s a
solution that will make the problem that some people want to solve far worse.

------
JakeAl
I think before we change the system we might want to get politicians to
actually do their job and represent the people in their district. With all
these people voting by mail and all these government provided or subsidized
phones and internet connections it's not only trivial but should be mandatory
to quantify and qualify what each person who votes wants as a matter of a
public record of accountability rather than having some party line being
towed. If the politicians were doing their job and not serving some party or
political agenda, the electoral college I think would work just fine. Popular
vote/mob rules? I don't think so. The majority should never rule over the
minority, and the only good government is a democracy where the majority vote
in the best interest of all citizens and compromise in order to do so. Or as I
like to sum it up, don't confuse a coop game with a competitive game.

------
zaroth
A hypothetical situation;

An amendment is proposed on the floor of the House to change the formula in a
bill for how funding is allocated.

The amendment presents a pro-urban allocation which provides a greater share
of funding for larger cities compared to a baseline per-capita allocation.

Urban center representatives stand up and argue how their cities need a higher
reimbursement rate because the issue at hand is costlier to fix or more
prevalent in their environment.

Rural representatives stand up and argue they need the baseline funding to run
an effective program.

A vote is taken, and 54% of votes approve the amendment, urban center reps
effectively pooling their votes to enact the funding paradigm that most
benefited their constituents.

——

The moral of the story is that it’s a lot more complicated than 1 person 1
vote.

Often times policies may benefit a rural area over and urban environment or
vice versa. One type of community benefiting and the expense of another.
Cities already carry a massive voting advantage, because, that’s where most
people live!

When bills pass on a majority vote, urban already wins over rural every time.
The rural areas maybe can form blocks to help push otherwise divided city reps
one way or another, but policy debate is already dominated by urban voters,
despite the claim of urban votes “counting less”. The simple math belies the
reality that urban center reps vote for pro-urban national policies and the
rural states with 1 rep sit on the sidelines.

The last place these votes matter, even in the slightest, is in the EC in a
closely contested election, and in the Senate. Frankly I’m not convinced more
populism is any benefit, or that cities are particularly hurting from a lack
of representation.

~~~
positr0n
The thing I've never understood about this argument is why the urban/rural
divide is so special that it needs special rules? There are a bajillion other
types of ways to categorize people that there is a majority and a minority
besides the population density of their state.

~~~
zaroth
It’s a hypothetical, of course it’s contrived. Thankfully things break down
much more chaotically than just an urban/rural split! That’s not to say there
is not a general effect present.

Here’s another way to think of it. How many congressional votes does Los
Angeles get before it’s people are adequately represented? Right now I believe
it’s 18.

Even at that level their vote per capita is technically 3:1 less powerful than
a person in WY. But whose interests are being served better in Congress?

Is the population of LA really disenfranchised in Congress due to WY getting a
representative, or because LA didn’t get 30?

There’s a power effect which is very much non-linear due to the individual
votes in Congress being decided on a win/loss by majority or super-majority
and this effect already greatly benefits these so-called “disenfranchised”
voters.

