Virginia signs national popular vote bill into law, joining interstate compact with 17 other states and District of Columbia
A national majority vote for president is one step closer to reality after the Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed the national popular vote bill into law, joining an interstate compact with 17 other states and the District of Columbia.
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state. The compact takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes – 270 of 538 – pass the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest. With Virginia, the compact now has 222 electors.
Every state that has so far enacted the compact has Democratic electoral majorities, including California, New York and Illinois. But legislation has been introduced in enough states to reach the 270-elector threshold, including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Umm… hold on, did something good just happen?
Per the description in the post.
In other words, they need additional states with a combined total of at least 48 electoral votes to pass the legislation in order for it to take effect. So they’re closer, but nothing has happened quite yet.
Not yet, but it’s getting closer to actually happening. It is at a minimum not a bad thing.
Not necessarily good or bad. There’s nothing binding here, just based on good faith reporting. Best case scenario would be all blue states and a few less-red swing states signing on, effectively disenfranchising red states.
Of course I’d bet any amount of money that SCOTUS would rule that a plan like this can’t leave out any state’s reported result. From there it’s a simple step to say “Texas and Florida are reporting 99% votes for Trump”, allowing their large populations to rig the results.
Nobody gets disenfranchised. Rather this compact enables the radical idea of “one person, one vote”.
So they kinda do. Mainly because the constitution doesn’t set up a one, person, one vote type of government. So by circumventing the constitution, it would be disenfranchising people from small states that are supposed to have a “louder” voice in a way. Now, the concept dates back from when states were far more autonomous, and the federal gov was not so strong. So I think we agree that it is outdated, and one person one vote would be better. But disenfranchised doesn’t mean losing your vote, it means losing the power of your vote as granted by the current rules.
Sure but the constitution set up a far far more proportionally representative system than what we currently have. If the house was just uncapped this wouldn’t be a problem, no I don’t care how much of a problem uncapping the house be they can go fuck themselves.
It can’t enable anything without federal oversight via a constitutional amendment. Voting is within the purview of each individual state, so the states in this compact have no oversight on their peers (let alone the powers to demand a recount or rerun the election).
For example, let’s say 20 states make up exactly 270 EC votes. The popular vote within those states (if allocated proportional to votes) ends up as 136/270 to candidate X. The other 30 states report universal support for candidate Y.
By rights, Y should win with 402 EC votes and 74% of the popular vote. But if the compact chooses to ignore those states as fraudulent then candidate X wins with a mere 26%.
Similar fuckery can happen with late reporting of votes or a state in the compact reneging on the agreement and voting against the rest. There’s absolutely nothing binding about this, it’s just a pinky promise among these states.
You’re a touch off. If the state passes a law backing the compact, it is now law in their state. The feds don’t have much of a say unless they make a case for discrimination. It’s true the other states have no power to enforce it, but they don’t have to. Someone from an offending state can sue their state for ignoring a law they passed. And there would be no shortage of such someones.
Unless they strongly protect the compact (such as putting it in the state constitution) they can just as easily repeal it. And honestly it would be downright negligent to not add an escape hatch.
I’d also expect a bunch of lawsuits the first time a candidate wins a state but the compact flips the result.
I don’t expect there to be lawsuits from the compact “flipping results” as you put it, partly because that’s entirely the wrong framing for how it works but mostly because all those lawsuits would be gotten out of the way when the laws first come into effect. The reason flipping a state’s results is the wrong framing is simple, the compact only comes into effect when there are enough electoral college votes participating to be able decide the election on their own. At that point it is meaningless to say someone “won” any individual state, because the only number that matters is the national vote.
Of course they can change the law. But if they don’t do it before the election, the change would be legally dubious at best.
I’m not sure it’s actually a good thing for electors to go against their voters but it’s a workaround that may make things better by ensuring the winner is the actual overall popular vote winner
They already largely go against their voters in every election. FPTP means all electors from a state go to one candidate, I could be wrong but I don’t believe one candidate has ever gotten remotely close getting 100% of a states vote.
Also, we’re one country right? If we’re one country then everyone’s voice should matter. And currently, there’s not even a strong reason for some people to show up to the polls when their state already swings over 20+ points in one direction.
People in both red, blue, and purple states would all be better represented from the popular vote being in place.