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.
I hope it accounts for what happens if those States’ votes equal/exceed 270 at one time but then electoral fuckery occurs and they drop below that number due to their bullshit census tallies. Because we all know Repubs will pull it in a heartbeat.
Yeah, the only way the compact survives is if it would not have affected the outcome of an election. If it will have an effect, every red state in the compact will have legislation on the governor’s desk by election day, calling for the immediate withdrawal from the compact, before the EC meets. That legislation will be wildly popular among the voters of those states.
Take a guess at how many red states have signed onto the compact at this point. It’s zero, exactly zero red states have signed on to this.
IIRC, a few swing states have signed on. I’d count them as red for these purposes. But yeah, to make this work, they’re going to need several red states that they aren’t going to get.