Over the past week, I’ve been hearing a lot of misinformation about the likelihood of the Electoral College surprise-voting in Hillary Clinton as our next president when they officially cast their votes on December 19. If only. Never before has the Electoral College seemed so out of step with the will of the people than it does now, with Clinton winning the popular vote by an ever-increasing margin, receiving more votes than anyone to run for president but Barack Obama, and still having to don an elegant purple suit to gracefully concede the election to an ignoramus apricot.
If you’re willing to chase any sliver of hope at this point, I’m with you. Hi. I signed that petition too. But if you’re serious about eliminating the Electoral College, the vestige of slavery that gives a loophole to the presidency to popular-vote losers like Donald Trump and George W. Bush, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Short of an Electoral College mutiny or a constitutional amendment (both extremely unlikely), there is one legislative route to eliminating the Electoral College, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Fair warning: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is not nearly as cool-sounding as “faithless electors.” It is wonky, it is dull, and it may not work. But it’s one possible way to get rid of the Electoral College’s influence on elections, and unlike those more hypothetical routes, it’s a concrete plan that’s had at least some momentum over the past several years.
Here’s how it would work:
(1) Individual state legislatures pass a bill stating they’ll give their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote.
(2) Once a number of states totaling 270 electoral votes have signed onto the compact, it goes into effect. If it had been in effect this year, Hillary Clinton would’ve won the presidency, because 270 votes would have automatically gone to her after she won the popular vote.
(3) Loophole closed, no more Trumps or Bushes, no constitutional amendment needed.
To be clear, this is still kind of a long shot, and it’s got its detractors. Nate Silver, for example, has called it “doomed” because so far primarily blue states have signed on, although it’s passed through some Republican-controlled state chambers, and opposition to the Electoral College can be found among Republicans as well as Democrats. It’s got more of a leg to stand on than hoping for rogue electors. Since 2007, 10 states and the District of Columbia have signed onto the Compact, and it’s currently sitting at a total of 165 electoral votes, about 61 percent of the way to its goal of 270.
About the states that have signed on: Oregon isn’t one of them. Get with your state legislators about that here.
Hey Megan, really don’t disagree with much of the sentiment in your post (read: I completely fucking agree). I guess I’d only say that calling the Electoral College solely a “vestige of slavery” is possibly only including the uncharitable interpretation of the Electoral College as opposed to including the charitable reason behind it as well.
The simplest charitable explanation is that with such a geographically diverse country, there needs to be electoral controls in place to ensure that there isn’t an oligarchy of population density. And based on what most of the presidential Electoral College maps have looked like in my 20 years of voting I’m not entirely sure that’s an unreasonable concern.
But I still agree with your overall sentiment, and I’d encourage any of your readers who agree with the sentiment of your post to look at ranked-choice voting. It’s actually been working extremely well for Australia for quite some time now.
It’s also worth noting the Canada (geographically similar to the US, totes obvy) uses a popular vote system, namely the first-past-the-post system, which is about has straight up as a popular vote system you’re going to find. This has actually led to a lot of dissatisfaction among rural provinces in Canada, in the feeling of dispossession as well as an inability to effect change in the voting system because of their dispossession. A number of political analysts feel this is what drove Stephen Harper’s (Canada’s Dubya) election in the first place.
Now, a presidential candidate could lose while winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation’s votes!
The biggest cities are almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
16% of the U.S. population lives outside the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Rural America has voted 60% Republican. None of the 10 most rural states matter now.
16% of the U.S. population lives in the top 100 cities. They voted 63% Democratic in 2004.
The population of the top 50 cities (going as far down as Arlington, TX) is only 15% of the population of the United States.
Suburbs divide almost exactly equally between Republicans and Democrats.
A survey of Oregon voters showed 76% overall support for a national popular vote for President.
NationalPopularVote.com