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.
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.
The only way red states would be disenfranchised in any way would be if presidential candidates decided it wasn’t worth spending money on them to earn their outsized voting power. Under this scheme everyone gets an equal say in who becomes president, unlike now where your vote in Wyoming counts for about triple your vote in Indiana because Wyoming has the bare minimum of three electoral college seats and only the population to deserve one.
States are permitted to enter into compacts with each other without Congressional approval. Democrats everywhere are rediscovering federalism and all its wonders. One thing I’d like my state to do is open a public bank, like North Dakota did. They opened it in 1919, and it was one of the few banks that weathered the Great Recession of 2008 without needing a bailout while Wall Street was on fire. A few years prior, North Dakota was facing a $48M budget crisis. The BND kicked in $25M, reducing the need for layoffs and spending cuts. It does everything a private bank does, but its profits go into North Dakota’s general fund, instead of lining the pockets of investors.
Want to know the real kicker? It’s basically a socialist enterprise, in the reddest of red states. Republicans fucking hate the Bank of North Dakota, but it’s proven too successful and too popular to kill. It would be political suicide for them to even try.
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.
I think maybe you misunderstood the compact.
I’m your example, the states who signed the compact would all put their votes to candidate Y, assuming they had more popular votes in all states.
It’s not “join us or be punished”, it’s “we will implement the will of the majority, not matter what”.
So, as in my original comment, you would expect the blue states to graciously allow Texas + Florida + a few other deep red states to unilaterally declare the winner by leveraging the compact’s EC votes? When push comes to shove this compact will either be kingmakers or fall apart.
The 17th Amendement requires the direct election of Senators. Blue state accept red states’ votes for those.
If you’re going to make an argument based on bad faith of states, then the US basically ceases to exist as a republic, regardless of whether you have the compact.
What about recent American politics gives you the impression that states will act in good faith? Hell, look back even farther at the slave state collusion for Mexican territory, secession, Reconstruction fuckery, Jim crow, etc…
The only limit to states acting in bad faith has historically been the federal government. When states start fucking around too much, laws like the Voting Rights Act get drawn up to claw more power away from them.
IMO the state-federation experiment has all but failed and the majority of good faith states need a proper convention to build a modern government. Choosing now of all times to put your faith in those anti-democratic, Christo-fascist slave states is the dumbest option possible.
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.
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.