“… a few electoral votes could easily decide 2020…”
I had the same thought. And the Repub supporters are just the ones to bribe electors with big bucks to make voting for Trump attractive.
HIllary clearly won the popular vote in 2016. We have plenty of stats to prove that there is a clear winner in the popular vote.
It’s easy to envision a case where a candidate reveals himself/herself as unfit for the office. Say one is indicted for a crime the public was unaware and it happened after the election but before the Electorial College voted. Or some disqualifying (in the public’s eyes) event occurred in the same period.
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We don’t have a majority-vote system, even within (most) states. With the EC we sure don’t have a majority popular vote system nationally.
In most of the country, we have a plurality winner system. (This is colorfully called first-past-the-post.) That is, whoever collects the most votes wins. There is no requirement to collect a majority of the votes to win.
A ranked-choice ballot would implement a requirement for a majority (of votes as counted) vote to win. In 2016 a ranked choice system would allow someone who simply couldn’t stand to vote for either Clinton or Trump as her first choice to vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, and then for her second choice be sane and vote for Hillary. As soon as it was apparent that Jill Stein wasn’t going to be in the top 3, her vote would count for Clinton (her second choice).
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Precisely.
If we have to have the EC, we have to stop letting assholes run for President. Instead, allow/require people to run for the office of Elector.
Can you tell me who even one of the 2016 electors in your home state was? I can’t tell you who the Ohio electors were.
The other thing I’d do is stop throwing elections into the Congress if no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes for the position. I think we should haul the EC’s collective asses out to an igloo near Pt Barrow and lock them in there until white smoke emerges. Of course that would require a Constitutional amendment, and it would be easier to get rid of the EC than to make it function more-or-less as the framers intended.
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Well my comment on this is that you would think that someone who is “the vice president for litigation & strategy at the Campaign Legal Center and a professor from practice at Georgetown Law Schoo” would know and does know that the way the Tenth Circuit decided this has been established law for a long time. I know the education system is not what it used to be but I learned this clear back in the 70s in high school civics.
I wouldn’t want him adopting this kind of strategy to attack the case (the will bring chaos strategy seeing as how it’s been this way for a long time) if he was the lawyer taking it to court. I think it would tend to tick judges off about him being willfully ignorant or acting as if he was.
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That isn’t the popular vote initiative. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would award EC votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of who won the signatory state’s popular vote. The laws don’t go into effect unless and until there are sufficient electoral college votes to force the election of the national popular vote winner.
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The electors have been and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
There have been 24,067 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 31 have been cast in a deviant way, for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector’s own political party (one clear faithless elector, 29 grand-standing votes, and one accidental vote). 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome.
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The 10th Circuit Court ruling does not affect the National Popular Vote law.
This decision does nothing to stop a state from appointing electors who promise to vote for the winner of the national popular vote.
The Baca decision invalidates the removal of an elector but not the states’ ability to name electors, the National Popular Vote legislation would remain enforceable.
Electors under the National Popular Vote compact would loyally vote as rubberstamp as they do with the current system.
If the political parties do their job of vetting their nominees for the position of presidential electors, faithless electors cannot not have any effect on the outcome – under either the current system or the National Popular Vote compact.
The compact is identical to the current system in that it assumes that the political parties carefully vet the people they nominate for positions in the Electoral College. Given the amount of publicity received by the 7 faithless electors in 2016 (which was, of course, an election under the current system), you can bet that both parties will be extremely attentive in their vetting of the people they nominate for the position of presidential elector in 2020.
The presidential electors are nominated by the political parties.
Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes, the presidential electors are the persons nominated by the political party whose presidential candidate receives the most popular votes inside each state.
Under the compact, the presidential electors are the persons nominated by the political party whose presidential candidate receives the most popular vote in all 50 states and DC become members of the Electoral College from the states that have enacted the compact.
Since the compact only goes into effect after being enacted by states having a majority of the Electoral College (270 of 538), the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC will have a majority of the presidential electors in the Electoral College and thus become President.
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You can see the electors of each state on the Certificates of Ascertainment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia containing the official count of the popular vote at the NARA web site
The National Popular Vote bill is the way to make every person’s vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees the majority of Electoral College votes to the candidate who gets the most votes among all 50 states and DC.
The bill eliminates the possibility of Congress deciding presidential elections, regardless of any voters anywhere.
The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
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With the current system of electing the President, none of the states requires that a presidential candidate receive anything more than the most popular votes in order to receive all of the state’s or district’s electoral votes.
Since 1828, one in six states have cast their Electoral College votes for a candidate who failed to win the support of 50 percent of voters in their state
. In elections in which the winner is the candidate receiving the most votes throughout the entire jurisdiction served by that office, historical evidence shows that there is no massive proliferation of third-party candidates and candidates do not win with small percentages. For example, in 905 elections for governor in 60 years, the winning candidate received more than 50% of the vote in over 91% of the elections. The winning candidate received more than 45% of the vote in 98% of the elections. The winning candidate received more than 40% of the vote in 99% of the elections. No winning candidate received less than 35% of the popular vote.
Since 1824 there have been 17 presidential elections in which a candidate was elected or reelected without gaining a majority of the popular vote.-- including Lincoln (1860), Wilson (1912 and 1916), Truman (1948), Kennedy (1960), Nixon (1968), Clinton (1992 and 1996), and Trump.
Americans, generally, do not view the absence of run-offs in the current system as a major problem. If, at some time in the future, the public demands run-offs, that change can be implemented at that time.
And, FYI, with the current system of awarding electoral votes by state winner-take-all (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a plurality of the popular vote in 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.
A presidential candidate could lose with 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 states.
There are good reasons why no state awards their electors proportionally.
Electors are people. They each have one vote. The result would be a very inexact whole number proportional system.
Every voter in every state would not be politically relevant or equal in presidential elections.
It would sharply increases the odds of no candidate getting the majority of electoral votes needed, leading to the selection of the president by the U.S. House of Representatives, regardless of the popular vote anywhere.
It would not accurately reflect the nationwide popular vote;
It would reduce the influence of any state, if not all states adopted.
It would not improve upon the current situation in which four out of five states and four out of five voters in the United States are ignored by presidential campaigns, but instead, would create a very small set of states in which only one electoral vote is in play (while making most states politically irrelevant),
It would not make every vote equal.
It would not guarantee the Presidency to the candidate with the most popular votes in the country.
The National Popular Vote bill is the way to make every person’s vote equal and matter to their candidate because it guarantees the majority of Electoral College votes to the candidate who gets the most votes among all 50 states and DC.
No, it doesn’t. It guarantees the apportionment of the Electors to the candidates proportionately. So if the Republican gets 60% and the Dem gets 40%, 60% of the Republican slate and 40% of the Democratic slate get sent to the real election in December. At which point, they can still vote however the hell they please. Cuz that’s their job as Electors.
Exactly. The only real solution to the problem of the Electoral College is to get rid of the Electoral College. But I think it’s going to take establishing the compact, and showing the GOP that they can be outvoted that way, to get them to abandon the whole Electoral College idea.
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But she did not win a majority of the popular vote, because enough votes went to third-party candidates that nobody got a majority. As others here have pointed out, most elections in this country are decided by the winner of the most votes, even if it doesn’t constitute a majority. There are only a few that require run-off elections if the winner does not get a majority.
And that’s another bomb waiting to go off with the Electoral College. If nobody wins a majority of the Electoral College votes, then the election is decided in the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets just one vote. In other words, Wyoming has as much of a vote as California or New York. And you know where that leaves us.
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With the National Popular Vote bill, when every popular vote counts and matters to the candidates equally, successful candidates will find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Pennsylvania and Florida, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support. Elections wouldn’t be about winning a handful of battleground states.
We would not be doing away with the Electoral College, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, etc. etc. etc.
Fourteen of the 15 smallest states by population are ignored, like medium and big states where the statewide winner is predictable, because they’re not swing states. Small states are safe states. Only New Hampshire gets significant attention.
Support for a national popular vote has been strong in every smallest state surveyed in polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group
Among the 13 lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in 9 state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 5 jurisdictions.
Now political clout comes from being among the handful of battleground states. 70-80% of states and voters are ignored by presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.
State winner-take-all laws negate any simplistic mathematical equations about the relative power of states based on their number of residents per electoral vote. Small state math means absolutely nothing to presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, or to presidents once in office.
In the 25 smallest states in 2008, the Democratic and Republican popular vote was almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million), as was the electoral vote (57 versus 58).
In 2012, 24 of the nation’s 27 smallest states received no attention at all from presidential campaigns after the conventions. They were ignored despite their supposed numerical advantage in the Electoral College. In fact, the 8.6 million eligible voters in Ohio received more campaign ads and campaign visits from the major party campaigns than the 42 million eligible voters in those 27 smallest states combined.
The 12 smallest states are totally ignored in presidential elections. These states are not ignored because they are small, but because they are not closely divided “battleground” states.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections.
Similarly, the 25 smallest states have been almost equally noncompetitive. They voted Republican or Democratic 12-13 in 2008 and 2012.
Voters in states, of all sizes, that are reliably red or blue don’t matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.
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The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
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The National Popular Vote bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
ALL of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes among all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.
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