A national effort to circumvent the Electoral College has gained another state.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill Monday that adds the state to the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement among states to award their presidential electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner.
With Virginia, the total number of states signed on to the interstate compact is now 18, plus the District of Columbia, for a total of 222 electoral votes.
The compact doesn’t go into effect, though, until there are enough states signed up to reach the required 270 electoral votes to elect a president.
It actually functionally favors milquetoast, moderate candidates.
Your preferred candidate will never win, nobody’s will. But a lot of people will probably agree on 2nd or 3rd choice candidates.
Ranked choice helped Mamdani get elected. It doesn’t have to favor moderate candidates if like-minded candidates form coalitions and campaign together, like Mamdani and Lander did.
I definitely think that RCV is a step in the right direction, but I’m also interested to see where Fusion Voting goes. It also helped Mamdani get elected. Lee Drutman has written some interesting stuff about it: https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/how-fusion-voting-builds-the-new