[litoE]

Another approach that is in the works is the so-called States Compact whereby each state would assign all its electors to the candidate that gets the most votes nationwide. This has the advantage that no change to the Constitution is needed. Currently, several States have agreed to this, and the Compact will be activated once enough States sign on that provide more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the election.

[big-green-man]

It would require a modification to the constitution, Article 1 Section 10 Clause 3 prohibits the states from entering into any compact with one another without the consent of congress. Congress could consent to it, which would bypass the amendment requirements, but I doubt they would as it takes federal power away.

[krapp]

I don't know if it would. At least according to the Wikipedia article on state compacts[0] and the entire article on the constitutionality of this specific compact[1] SCOTUS has already ruled that explicit consent isn't always necessary (it can even just be inferred,) and there seems to be some room for debate.

Of course it doesn't really matter. The Constitution means whatever you can bribe the Supreme Court to say it means. God Bless America.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionality_of_the_Natio...

[analog31]

The main problem is that it takes power away from one party.

[big-green-man]

Yes, and as of today that party would be the one youre (probably) not thinking of.

[analog31]

To clarify, and hopefully not to politicize, I belong to the Democratic Party. I think the Democrats fell out of love with the electoral college years ago. Likewise with gerrymandering. Even if we may have been complicit in creating those systems.

At this point, of course there's always a risk that something could go awry, but I'm willing to accept the risks inherent in a one-person-one-vote system -- essentially an elective republic.

[big-green-man]

Well, of by "awry" you mean that, as has happened this year, the Republicans get the majority popular vote, then it's not really a principled stance on the fairness or little d democratic effectiveness of the electoral college. If you're fine with still losing elections, I can't say you're unprincipled.

Both parties gerrymander. Both parties engage in "principled" discussions supporting positions seeking only expedient means to their practical objectives. I may be convinced that you believe in purely democratic election of the president, I'm not convinced that the Democratic party as an organization truly does.

I'm not a Republican. But I do like the existing system, where one house in the legislature represents the states, the other represents the people, and the executive is selected by the states with impunity regarding the criteria of selecting him. I'm also very happy that every state has independently decided that their citizens should be the arbiter of that outcome. I would not be happy with that though being encoded in such a way that this was not optional for states, I prefer the status quo, where it is just the stable state of the system and emergent out of existing incentives.

I'd be happier if the electoral college was closer to the popular vote, but my preferred method for achieving that would be the ratification of the congressional apportionment amendment, because it empowers the people at the expense of the federal government and the parties, and also empowers them in the legislature as well as the executive branch, whereas just direct vote only empowers them in the executive branch, not the legislature, and does so at the expense of the states and not at all at the expense of the parties.

[analog31]

By "awry" I mean that one party gets the popular vote, the other party wins the election, which didn't happen this time. I'm not contesting this election, though I think it's a disaster.

It's true that the Democrats gerrymander. I think it gives them an advantage in Illinois and Massachusetts. I'm personally willing to give that up, and let my party take its chances in an elective republic.

I agree that your preferred method makes sense. I can't think of another way.

I don't believe that the House represents the people. In my state, the House delegation, and the state legislature, are effectively chosen by the ruling party through gerrymandering. This could be found to be illegal, since the Constitution requires the states to have a republican form of government. But I'm not sure I'm willing to take my chances with letting the Supreme Court decide on this right now.

I think that eliminating gerrymandering might have an impact on policy, since both parties would have to change how they appeal to voters.

[duxup]

So the electors are restricted to what they can do to some extent, but can the individual state tell the electors to do something that conflicts with what their own voters may have overwhelmingly voted against?

That seems like it would inevitably fall apart.

Also present a lot of mystery about "they going to do it?" and then someone doesn't and someone else chooses something else.

Talk about a mess for democracy ...

[twoodfin]

You are, I believe, correct.

States can pick any means of selecting their electors that doesn’t conflict with other provisions of the Constitution. Obviously, a state imposing a requirement that electors be white or male would not fly.

OK, so they choose to have a state election. It must be a fair election, affording due process to all the voters as that is Constitutionally understood (one person, one vote, for example).

“We’ll have an election, but if national results go a different way, we’ll throw out the votes of the ‘wrong’ voters,” is … not that.

An analogy: Could the southern states agree to a compact to elect their governors by party slate? I doubt that would pass muster, and neither would the popular vote compact.

[yongjik]

I can't find a table for this election, but for 2020, the most Republican state was Wyoming, with 27% (73k) still voting for Biden. Wyoming still got to ignore those 73k voters because the rule says the winner of the state takes it all.

Similarly in the other direction: aside from DC, the most Democratic state was Vermont, which ignored its 31% of voters choosing Trump.

Now consider that these are the most extreme states, and by definition, all other states ignored larger proportion of voters through winner-takes-all. Arizona had 49.36% D vs 49.06% R. Did the republican vote matter? Barely 10k more votes and the whole state decides all of its 11 votes are for Biden.

Yet somehow, no riots, no overthrowing state governments. (Yes yes we eventually had riots but that's a different issue - they were totally okay with the rules, they just didn't like the results.)

Popular vote is basically "Our state decided to choose what the majority of Americans want. The people have spoken, and chose candidate X. We're now honoring the decision." There's no reason why it should fall apart any more than the electoral college should.

[bryanlarsen]

> There's no reason why it should fall apart any more than the electoral college should.

People will accept a flawed mechanism that's been used for 200 years far more readily than a new slightly-less-flawed-but-still-flawed mechanism.

And every voting mechanism has trade-offs, so every mechanism has flaws from certain perspectives.

[duxup]

Being a winner takes all state by LAW isn't the same as just "agreeing" with the next door neighbor state that you will be a winner take all, based on a national popular vote, and tell electors to do something different ...

That's not the same thing at all.

[yongjik]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

In each of the seventeen states and DC, National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been passed by the state legislature, and signed by the executive branch, except for Hawaii (whose governor tried to veto it but it was overriden).

The bills followed all the proper steps to be signed into respective state's laws. It's not some kind of "agreement." It's the LAW. If you don't like it, feel free to go campaign in those states to change the LAW.

[twoodfin]

State laws incompatible with the Constitution are null & void.

“We’re going to award our electors according to a compact never approved by Congress and that by design disenfranchises some fraction of our citizens who voted in a Federal election.”

[scoofy]

The problem with a popular-vote systems is that we have a decentralized system of elections. Most people don't take seriously that many states would be incentivizes to cheat or at least look the other way to boost the number of votes coming from their state.

It's not election changing if one state, lets say accidentally, allows people to vote twice. It could effect their local outcomes, but if everyone votes twice, it should net itself. However, a fair election of the president would be completely fucked.

[yongjik]

It's the other way. Under EC the election is often decided by a single state with tiny margin, and because America does not have the good sense to use a national standard voting system, it falls to the eccentricity of the particular state (and its counties) doing whatever they think is adequate. Look up the "hanging chad" controversy of 2000 - paper punching machines might have not worked properly for a few hundred votes and it potentially decided the outcome of the nation.

Under popular vote, even the minimal vote margins are quite large because it's aggregated at the national scale - e.g., Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960 with only 0.17% difference in popular vote, which was still 113K votes.

To sway that election, you would've had to organize across multiple states to find a way to smuggle 113K votes illegally, while not getting any suspicions from poll workers and people tabulating results. And non of your co-conspirators should ever divulge it. It's so ridiculous that it approaches "9/11 was an insider job" territory.

[maxerickson]

We already have a similar problem to what you describe.

You propose a weakness in our election system where a conspiracy of state officials that wants to influence an election can control who is allowed to vote twice. If they can do this, they can already influence the outcome in their state.

Of course we see no such thing, because the elections are only administered at a state level, they are actually done at a local level, and there's quite a lot of observation and auditing that goes into verifying that things are done correctly.

[wakawaka28]

That makes no sense. You would be surrendering your state's autonomy to outsiders. There is nothing particularly wrong with the current system except the perception that the occasional fraction of a percent discrepancy in popular vote vs electoral vote is devastating somehow.

[tunesmith]

The Supreme Court would probably strike this down once it threatens to activate.

[mhh__]

How so?

[tunesmith]

Any of the states that aren't party to it could file suit, and the ones that are against it probably would. There's also the bald reality that the NPVIC does overall advantage one party and disadvantage the other, and that "other" party is known to have much more of an influence in the Supreme Court.

[shaftway]

I don't know that I believe that it does disadvantage one party. After all, the "other" party did just get a majority in the popular vote.

[tunesmith]

They also won the electoral college. You have to ask yourself which party has a higher likelihood of winning the popular vote while losing the electoral college.

[glimshe]

The compact is likely unconstitutional. It hasn't been tested in courts because it hasn't been "activated". I wouldn't put my hopes in this solution (or any other, it's non-issue IMHO)

[starik36]

How is this different from popular vote?

[superfrank]

It's not and that's the point.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a way to choose the president by popular vote without the overhead of removing the electoral college.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

[starik36]

So then it should be called "Popular Vote" and not "Interstate Compact". It just obfuscates the issue.

[superfrank]

It's called the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact". The Interstate Compact part just means that it's a legally binding agreement between states.

[elcritch]

It would be implementing a popular vote nationwide by circumventing the electoral college. It’s just a mechanism to get around modifying the constitution.

[readthenotes1]

The current compact only kicks in is the electoral college vote and the popular vote differ.

That is quite a bit different than the popular vote as you can see this year when Trump would have basically run the board of electoral college votes without that caveat.

[InitialLastName]

Either way, the person who wins the popular vote wins the election; what difference does it make how many electoral college votes they get (if the electoral votes are determined by a rule like that).

[starik36]

Exactly, they called it something else in order to obfuscate the issue. Call it what it is.

[kcplate]

I predict that this all goes away now with a Trump popular vote win. This tends to only gain support and media coverage when Democrats were winning popular vote but were losing the Electoral college.

If you overlay the existing states that have passed the NPVIC over what Harris won, all but MN went blue. If the compact was active for 2024 with the current participating states, Harris would have only received the VA and NH electoral wins for a total of 17 votes. Trump would have 521 votes.

[_zagj]

This approach, unlike the one in the OP, removes the per-state quarantining effect that the electoral college has on voter fraud. That makes it a non-starter for red states: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/california-gover...

[rpearl]

There is no evidence[1][2][3] of any meaningful amount of voter fraud in any modern US election.

States without strict voter id still have mechanisms to ensure people who vote are real people and that they vote once. Strict voter id is security theater, though it does not reduce turn-out, either.[4]

[1] https://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/

[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/26/15424270/v...

[3] https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The...

[4] https://www.nber.org/papers/w25522