Of course they are. It’s meant to be a carrot, forever out of reach, and not threatening the investor class.

His concerns boil down to:

• this might favor democrats more than I thought
• states could change their minds again, and that would be confusing
• there should be an independent body for determining the national popular vote

"Now that we're winning texas, the corrupt system that allows a president to lose the popular vote but still be elected favors us. So lets not change anything."

That line of thinking is how we also get a president with too much power.

Same with gerrymandering. Once youre in power, why change anything? It clearly worked for you!

Why vote for a billionaire tax? You could be a billionaire some day too!

The wave isn’t about those who were elected. it’s about the voters. We voted for people who can actually be swayed by public pressure. It’s. it up to those who are elected to lead. We have to be active in this. They’re just our representatives. We’re the boss. We need to communicate to them that we put them there, and we decide what they’re going to do.

wdym we're supposed to actually do something instead of endlessly theorize?

Man I read that, and maybe I'm missing something, but I find his argument extremely thin.

As an example: We have an election. It’s nationally very close in the popular vote. So we want to do a proper recount to make sure that the result goes to the popular vote winner. But some ruby red states will say, “We weren’t part of this plan ever. The election in our state wasn’t particularly close. We don’t want to pay for any recount.”

Okay. But as Counter-Example A: We have an election. It's nationally very wide. So we look at the numbers and see Hillary won by 3 million more votes but then still hand it to the loser — which is worse?

As Counter-Example B: We have an election. It's nationally somewhat close with a half-million vote disparity, but we leave it up to a particular county in a particular state and once tallied up, we still give it to the loser with a 543,000-vote deficit — which is worse? (2000 election)

These are events that completely altered the trajectory of America and whose margins for inaccuracy and deviating from the Will of the People extend well beyond what would trigger a recount.

Besides, we're already entrusting red states to faithfully and independently carry out their tabulations with a certain degree of accuracy. Moreover FairVote.org: "Recounts rarely change the outcome of Elections. and it's dubious to suggest that recounts are more accurate and less corruptible than the original tally.

... So, how is this not objectively better than a red state giving its electors on a sliver's margin in their own state anyway? The inherent "winner-take-all" of 48 states (barring Maine and Nebraska) means a 49/51 grants all votes to the opponent? Absurd. The sliver's margin of what might trigger a recount is quite a bit different than a 3-million chunk of the pie.

The idea of the national popular vote isn't just that it's "fairly counted," it's that you literally prevent the person who won 3 million more votes (Hillary, 2016) from losing, even when they are fairly counted.

I'd like to hear responses from Lawrence Lessig, John Koza, and Robert W. Bennett.

It's such a tacked-on dipshit solution that will fail the first time it is tested. "But we had an agreement! A compact!" a little more than half the nation will say while [insert swing state that goes GOP] laughs and makes Trump's illegitimate rape baby raised by inbred cannibals POTUS.

But the current proposal that states are adopting doesn’t have any national body at all to oversee the vote tally, and you think that’s a serious problem too.

Yes, it’s Scylla and Charybdis. Here are the problems on the other side.

Let’s say, California says, “Gee, let’s let 17-year-olds vote because there’ll be more Californians in the national popular vote that way.” Then Florida says, “We’re going to let 16-year-olds vote.” And then Arkansas says, “We’re going to let dogs vote. Or we’re going to let parents vote for 12-year-old children.”

Some states make it really easy to vote and register to vote, some states don’t. Is it really a national popular vote — a “one person, one vote” system — if you have huge variation in voter eligibility, voter registration, administration on Election Day, or election month as it is in some places.

Or, states agree to this plan. They add up to 270. And then as Election Day approaches, something may happen in an individual state, and they try to back out. What’s going to happen in that situation? Or what if they don’t back out in advance of the election, but try to change their rules after election day? What happens if a state supreme court says, “That’s not consistent with our state constitution?”

What I don’t want is for a deeply imperfect, historically tainted Electoral College system — that for all its flaws, actually works — to be replaced by a possibly catastrophic, legally glitchy new system where we don’t know who’s president, where we don’t know who won the popular vote.

Right on cue!

While I understand the reasoning, having citizens either younger than 18 or otherwise vote themselves without their parebts voting for them would increase the voter base yes but that would help counter other issues. For example in states like Florida, Alabama, Texas etc. they spent decades making sure voters were disenfranchised and removed from voter rolls meaning fewer registered voters in that state, so either those states make it easier to register and to vote increasing the voter turnout and potentially the vote for policies they would want, or they decrease the voter turnout and have less of a say in who becomes president. I.e. if you were a Republican in Iowa or something and wanted to pass a national abortion ban but it was a presidential election year and it was close to the line without the electoral college you could increase the vote, potentially, for the Republican candidate, by passing a law saying highschool juniors and seniors (16-17) can vote in presidential elections, this would increase the popular vote margins for Iowa, not knowing how they would vote overall for certain, assuming the highschool students now able to vote vote the same as the average of the state that means it would be an average distribution, but let's say that Iowa is pro republican (not this current election cycle but another) but also pro choice especially among the youth would be most affected by it increasing the vote share of the state to those who would be disproportionately troubled by that policy could backfire, the same works the other way with guns and lets go with Texas, if Dems keep Texas but then try passing very unpopular gun legislation in Texas that could make Texas red again for a presidential bid. Having more voices decide who runs the government, how they run it, and what policiers to go after thé better.

it isn't perfect but it corrects itself somewhat.

Admittedly I haven't read the whole details, but I still wonder how it gets properly enforced beyond good will and 'I totally promise'. It seems like something that would last only so long as all the members feel like doing it, if one decides 'fuck it' one day and doesn't comply what stops them?

The electoral college was put there so the denselr populated States do not get any advantage over the less populated ones, giving each member state equal power. It didn't work out well as they didn't account for the possibility of such huge difference in populations. I don't think the solution is to treat the union as a single country and count the overall votes though. Ranked choice or other even better ranked systems are the way forward in my opinion.

The dude saying the U.S. is the "stabilizing superpower of the world" still like we haven't systematically driven off our allies, courted dictators, shown ourselves to be a paper tiger(even before Iran), and started just taking over other countries, kidnapping the leaders of other countries, bombing random small boats in the middle of the ocean, and that we keep trying to permanently end the global dollar economy via reckless debt spending and deregulation. 👀

Also "Do non-partisan / bi-partisan redistricting commities work?" The article literally just goes: "What if they don't?" THEY DO. I LIVE Michigan. Things are infinitely more fair now that we have one in our state. They're just better. They just are.

Also also "Make sure you mention Donald Trump. That'll really get them on our side."

The entire argument is "there will be issues" like the last 250 years of U.S. politics hasn't been us desperately trying to duct tape over the massive issues in our constitution rather than reasonably updating/replacing it. They literally mention the Gore / Bush race and don't mention the PARTISAN Supreme Court literally just handed the election to Bush. SURE LET'S KEEP THE CURRENT SYSTEM, IT'S CLEARLY BETTER.

I don't generally get worked up about fluff pieces but man this one is just like, agregious.

Manufacture that consent, Vox.

“If the whole idea is that the national popular vote is fairly counted, it’s hard unless there’s buy-in by the counters everywhere, including in red states.”

Expecting Republican states to bypass a system that favors them is asinine. It's already only going to reach 270 if enough swing states join, some of which would selfishly prefer it if more attention were paid per capita to their citizens and issues during presidential elections, the exact opposite of what a fair and proportional representative democracy should be.

The least glitchy version is the one I imagined in 2001. My specific proposal involves a lot of interstate uniformity, and using an independent bipartisan mechanism. But it means going back to square one in each of the states.

That's far less likely to occur than even a constitutional amendment. Again, the problem is that using the popular vote is not a bipartisan issue; not only is the Electoral College designed to boost states with small populations, favoring Republicans, but many of those same Republican states intentionally suppress voter participation by various means to diminish the importance of the popular vote.

The only reason to have 2nd thoughts is that without Texas the electoral college is basically unwinable for Republicans

Yeah, it's not going to happen. Status quo above all.

Much harder to be a controlled opposition and continue enacting the will of a fascist kleptocracy without close battles that can be won or lost by a small number of sacrificial turncoats every couple of years.

"Nothing will fundamentally change" — Joe Biden to corporations (2023?)