Tuesday’s wave election swept Democrats into power in Congress. But the most seismic result for American politics and democracy may come out of the battleground states where Democrats just won trifecta control by taking both state houses and the governor’s mansion: Come January, Democratic legislators will have the votes to elect the next president by the popular vote.
State lawmakers could circumvent the Electoral College by enacting what’s known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the current system, each state gets a set number of electors, and the candidate who wins enough states to accumulate at least 270 electoral votes becomes president. This system allows the winner of the popular vote to lose, as Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton again in 2016. But the NPVIC would bypass the Electoral College, with each state that enacts the compact awarding its electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would only take effect once states representing a majority of electoral votes sign on, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.
In April, Virginia became the 18th state to join the compact, bringing the total number of electoral votes pledged under the proposal to 222. On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. That’s 61 electoral votes. Add in Alaska, where late-arriving votes are still being counted, and that’s 64. With Virginia on board, only 48 more votes are needed for the compact to reach 270 votes and take effect. The emerging math means there is a real chance that the next president is selected based on the national popular vote.
Heaven forfend! The person who gets the most votes wins? That’s antithetical to democracy and must be stopped.
Like fuck they will
The problem is how much power is put into the hands of one person, not how that one person is selected. Sure, it would be a slightly better if we had a slightly more fair way of selecting the president but it would be much better to break up the position into multiple positions. It would be much better to eliminate some of those powers altogether. It would be much better if it were more practical to hold those individuals responsible for the crimes they commit while in office. I’m not holding out hope that a popular vote will be a panacea cause occasionally awful people are the popular candidate and what then?
Trump won the popular vote in 2024 though.
All Democrats have to do is not suck, and they will never lose an election again. But this is OK too, I guess.
But the popular vote means areas with more population, like Texas and California, will have more say in who becomes president than, Rhode Island or Wyoming. Values and concerns can vary greatly to the point of complete opposites.
In Canada the Toronto area has 25% of Canada’s population and is often looked at with eye rolls because those filthy big city-dwellers have no idea how the other 75% live, and definately not the 25% of rural Canadians.
Popular, schmopular.
In truth, the EC disenfranchises 90% of the population because they live in states that are overwhelmingly red or blue. Why bother voting red in California? Or blue in Kansas?
A pact like this could actually change the voting patterns in those states.
Land doesn’t deserve representation, people do. Anyways, variations in values and concerns don’t generally follow state boundaries anyways.
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I’m not who you were responding to, but where tf did this come from?
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