[yellowapple]

In other words: California has promised to disenfranchise its own voters even more than is already the case. I can already see this backfiring spectacularly with a solidly-blue state like California being on the hook to put its electors toward a Republican popular vote winner.

[cpurdy]

That's a weird way to look at it.

The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement.

Right now, effectively, the land votes, and the people's vote is often ignored. Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature.

[yellowapple]

> The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement.

More like that the votes of people outside their state matter more than the votes of their own people. Nothing weird about that being recognized as the disenfranchisement that it is.

> Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature.

The Electoral College - and this compact of states pertaining to it - has precisely zero impact on any legislative branch, federal or state. It solely pertains to presidential elections (and in turn the rest of the Executive Branch).

The solution to the problem you describe would be to address gerrymandering and other instances of geographic electoral manipulation.

[brewdad]

It's not weird when it reflects the reality of the situation. It's the same reason we say voting third party is throwing your vote away. It's important to have more voices heard but in our first past the post system, voting for a candidate who can't get anywhere close to a third of the votes simply doesn't matter.

I haven't read the bill but if certain states are committing themselves to popular distribution of their electoral votes while the red states stick to all or nothing, the reality is that 40% of CA's electoral votes go red and blue candidates don't have a chance at winning.

[matthewdgreen]

The bill only applies when states representing 270 electoral votes adopt it. Since 270 votes determine the winner of the EC, it doesn’t matter at all what the remaining states do. The states that sign on would be required to put their votes towards whichever candidate wins the nationwide popular vote, effectively ending the electoral college in all but name. There’s not really much to criticize here if you believe that electing presidents by popular vote is a good idea.

[thalassophobia]

If I'm not mistaken, the bill only goes in effect when the states that have signed it start making up the majority of the electoral college.

[drdec]

Yes, it's hard to imagine that actually being executed without a ton of lawsuits. And you think people didn't accept the results of the last election, you haven't seen anything...

[ledauphin]

maybe, but according to the same Constitution that creates the existing system, this should be perfectly legal. Ultimately each state gets to send Electors for the President on its own terms.

[matthewdgreen]

However: several Supreme Court justices have signed on to the “independent state legislature” theory, a radical and unsupported interpretation which holds that state legislatures can’t be restricted in how they pick electors (even by their own laws and constitution.) I assume that if states actually adopted the NPV act, the court would instantly bypass it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_state_legislatur...