65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
I propose the National Popular Vote Interstate compact. Cgp grey has an amazing video on it. It’s a “petition” of sorts that basically says that states that sign it will have its elective representatives vote with the majority vote of their said state.
Here’s the video if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY
BREAKING: group of people whose only chance of getting elected is relying on the Electoral College not thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Electoral College
It’s a great idea until it affects them lol
The “founding fathers” would be against the electoral college today too. The electoral college was an idea to try to get the people to directly vote for the president.
The electoral college exists because the founding fathers didn’t want normal people voting for president. The whole point is to isolate people from directly choosing a president.
And it worked better before information was so easy to obtain.
There was also the little problem of logistics back then.
Which is why there’s still a ton of delay in the process. There’s about a month between voting for electors and them voting, and several months before the president was inaugurated.
Well of course they do, the electoral college was made specifically so that states with the most population aren’t the ones solely determining the outcome. If you got rid of the EC, the elections would come down to California, Florida, New York, and Texas.
Which ironically, given how Florida and Texas lean, would not “kill the Republican party” as some are claiming here.
You say that it would help Republicans, but the last two times the electoral college went against the popular vote they gave the presidency to Republicans.
Five presidents have been elected despite losing the popular vote. Four of those were Republicans: Hayes, Harrison, Bush, Trump. John Quincy Adams was the first, just as the Republican party came into existence, although he wasn’t a member. He joined it later.
I’m not saying it would either help them or hurt them. I think many people totally ignore that fact that if the election rules and law were changed in the United States, then campaign strategies would change too. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have enough resources and power to able to adapt.
I agree with that. Republicans have shown themselves to be remarkably adept at making people stupid enough to fall for their authoritarian bullshit.
The last republican to win the popular vote was Bush in 04. It would force them to actually care about what the people need instead of just threatening everyone else
We could start by reconsidering the Reapportionment Act of 1929…
This would help so much. Not only would greatly increasing the number of representatives lead to fairer representation - it would decrease lobbyist power in the House (harder to buy a critical number of members when there are so many representatives).
This was more of a valid argument when Republicans were winning elections. I think we should keep the electoral college as long as there’s a republican candidate that wants to overturn our democracy.
I fucking hate how Americans divide politics between liberals and conservatives. The pollster could have at least given a third ‘neither’ option.
By “the electoral college” most people seem to mean that each state has influence disproportionate to its population, because every state gets two electors regardless of size. Ignoring that that is independent of the electoral college, disproportionate power isn’t where most of the problem arises. The problem is that most states do not allocate their electors proportionally to how their citizens voted. Almost all states give all electors to the majority winner in the state. It’s not required to do it that way, and Maine and Nebraska allocate at least some of their electors based on the proportion of the vote.
If states allocated their electors solely based on the proportion of votes in the state, that would achieve what a national popular vote would achieve and more. For example, Trump won despite losing the poplar vote, but if states had instead allocated their electors proportionally to voters within the state, Trump would have lost.
Why do this instead of a national popular vote? First-past-the-post voting systems result in two party systems with a lot of conflict. Ranked choice systems elect representatives that are more agreeable to everyone. A national popular vote entrenches a bad system, making it harder to ever get a rank choice system.
More importantly from a pragmatic standpoint, it’s much harder to get a national popular vote implemented. To work, almost all of the states would need to get on board, but there’s no individual-level incentive for citizens of a state to agree to it. Why would the majority of citizens of Montana agree to send their electors to the national popular vote winner when it’s likely not the person they voted for? How are you going to convince them to join? The majority of people there won’t want that, so they won’t pass the law.
If states allocate based on proportion, individuals won’t be concerned that their votes will ever support a candidate they don’t like. It also doesn’t matter whether other states hop on board. Maine and Nebraska are proof of this. They changed their allocation schemes without regard for any other state. At the individual level, the choice is easy; no one wants their vote to go toward a candidate they don’t like, and the current system AND the national popular vote system both do that. If you think about your own views, are you in a state that the majority of the time the majority of people vote for a candidate you don’t like? Wouldn’t you rather have your state allocate proportionally? Are you in a place where the majority of the time your state goes the way you do? Are you happy that your neighbors’ opinions are suppressed? It’s pretty easy to get on board at an individual level, so that makes it easy to pass within a state.
People should give up on national popular vote and focus on getting their state to switch to proportional allocation. If you really want progress, target some key states: Florida, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a viable path to getting a national popular vote. Essentially if enough states agree to send all of their electoral votes to the popular candidate then the popular vote winning candidate will win the election. The compact will only go into effect once enough states agree that would make a majority. Right now there are states with 206 electoral votes that have agreed and only 65 more electoral votes would be needed.
I do feel like your proposition is harder to convince people to enact. Right now my state has finally changed to be for a party I support I don’t want to support legislation that will mean some of those electoral college votes will go to the other party, it would be more fair on the state level but not nationally. Sure I’d be okay with it if other states that vote for the other party did the same thing. It becomes this standoff where people want the other side to move first. That’s my favorite part about NPVIC is that it does away with the messy middle ground.
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Whatever else, I’m sure we can all agree that the current performative, pro-forma electoral college meetings are not what was intended by the framers.
“65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.”
No.
Remove the popular vote entirely.
Or, if we keep it, make the voting age equal to retirement age.
Lmao, do the opposite. Retirement age can’t vote, sounds more like it.
Nah.
If you’re still working, no vote.
And just for fun, make it only retired people with stock ownership.
My vote would finally matter. My state already knows who it’s supporting with or without me.
yeah, the ‘vote!’ stuff is hard to stomach living where i do, which went red on TV literally the minute polls closed
And the votes of the flyover states become an after thought.
I hate this argument. There are still a lot of votes in the flyover states. The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
Republicans still win the Ohio governor’s election despite 5 major metropolitan areas in the state.
Also there are Republican votes in New York and California that get discarded currently.
This isn’t a game, this is just making the thing fair.
The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
When you’ve become accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.
The “fix” for the problem of equality isn’t removing voter power from the flyovers it’s ADDING voter power to the large coastal states like California and doing it is so damned simple. Uncap the size of the House of Representatives by changing the Re-Aportionment Act of 1929.
The Wyoming Rule doesn’t go far enough in my mind but it’s a good starting point.
The GOP would never win in the house again.
Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on the districting process in each state. We’d certainly see new Republican’s in Congress from California but we’d also see new Democrats in Congress from Texas.
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That’s a great joke.
Exactly!
Why would you want people to decide their countrys future when empty landmass could do it?
Y-you’re telling me that gasp LAND DOESNT VOTE?!?!
You are so obtuse i would be amazed if you can find a chair that fits.
They are already advantaged in both the house and the senate. Why do they need advantages in literally all elections to feel they are treated fairly?
How?
Everyone gets 2 senators, and then 1 house rep for every so many people.
Not quite, the number of house reps is not strictly proportional to the population of each state. California has 704,566 people per house seat, while e.g. Wyoming has 568,300 per house seat. This means a Californian house vote is worth roughly 80% of a Wyoming house vote.
Right, because Kansas’s vote should hold the same weight as New York or California even though there’s less people that live in Kansas?
No, but a Kansan’s vote should have the same weight as a New Yorker’s or Californian’s, or even a Pennsylvanian or Michigander. Not all Kansans vote the same way, and it would be nice to have a system that recognizes this.
Tue votes of the flyover states would matter exactly as much as the votes of any other arbitrary subsection of the country with the same number of people. That’s the point.
And so, neither party is going to bother trying to court your vote: one can take you for granted, and the other will write you off. So I hope you have the same concerns as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, because that’s what you’re getting.
Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The better plan would be institute the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. The HoR is simply too damned small which not only limits the number of EC votes it also has the representative to citizen ratio fucked up 90 way to Sunday.
We broke the EC in 1929 by capping the size of the HoR and it’s well past time to fix it.
When you say majority, do you mean by popular vote, or…
multiple choice, presumably
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The Wyoming Rule, or something like it, would solve a lot more problems than just the EC.
Napavointerco
