The question is no longer if Democrats can pass a popular vote model for president, but whether they have the will or determination to do so. If those states opt to join the compact, it could go into effect as soon as the 2028 presidential election.

Spoiler: No.

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[–] 9 points 1 day ago (5 children)

They should absolutely try, but let's be clear - it would not work.

The moment they do it, it will trigger legal challenges from the red states, which will eventually be appealed to the Supreme Court, which, given its current conservative composition, would rule some bullshit like "The constitution intends for smaller states to have greater representation and this is an illegal end-run around that", and then the compact is dead forever.

You only get one chance to get a ruling on its constitutionality, and you want to pull the trigger when your odds are best.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Even if the Compact were not allowed, those states could all individually appropriate their electors to the popular vote winner if they wanted to. Not that they will.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

    Without the legal structure of the compact, it would become a complete mess of every legislature fighting over electoral vote allocation methods every 4 years, and it would almost certainly be the case that that would not always be a democratically desirable allocation.

    Even if the compact passed, the moment one of the legislatures flips, one of the states could pass legislation to suspend or remove themselves from the compact, and we're right back to the electoral college.

    I'd love to see popular vote as our selection method too - but the interstate compact is a fragile hail mary that, while we should pursue it, is likely not proportionally durable or useful enough to justify the amount of political capital and effort it would take to make reality.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I think this speaks to a problem Democrats have that Republicans don't, which is we insist on each action being fully considered, planned and weighed against alternative uses of energy, whereas Republicans just do it.

    The advantage they have is that, by just acting, they can do a lot more, which creates more and more work for us to fight. And what we forget is that, like how they cause problems for us in having to litigate and roll back what they do, what we do also causes problems for them that takes effort to fight.

    So instead of pre-defeating it, I think a better conclusion is that we should do for laudable and progressive things what republicans do for morally, constitutionally and legally wrong things: just do as much as fast as we can, and let them worry about spending time and energy fighting it. Sure, we of course follow the law, but stop over-optimizing and planning.

    So the reality is, they will have to triage too. And if NPV exists, with bipartisan buy-in (as it seems to poll usually) as the status quo for a few cycles, it may be very costly and probably not worth it for Republicans to fight it.

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