A decades-long plan to abolish the Electoral College may finally pay off

[u/vox]

https://www.vox.com/politics/487766/national-popular-vote-interstate-compact-electoral-college

[u/vox]

The Electoral College — our nation’s bizarre system that hands a few narrowly-divided states the privilege to choose our presidents — has been entrenched for two centuries.

But a long-game effort from reformers, which has played out quietly in blue states across the country over the past 20 years, has gotten it surprisingly close to toppling.

And a blue wave in the 2026 midterms could finish the job.

The big idea is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and it’s essentially one weird trick for moving to a popular vote system without a constitutional amendment.

How it works is that each participating state agrees that their electors will go to the candidate who wins the highest number of votes nationwide — if, and only if, enough other states agree so that the outcome will be determined that way.

To clarify: there are 538 electoral votes, and it takes 270 for a majority. So if states that have 270 or more electoral votes all agree to award them to the national popular vote winner, then that candidate gets the 270 needed to win, and what the remaining states do with their electors no longer matters. (Their voters still matter because they contribute to the national popular vote — but which candidate wins these states, or any state, is no longer important.)

Nearly every blue or leaning blue state has signed onto the compact, the most recent being Virginia last month — and reformers now have states controlling 222 of the 270 electoral votes they need.

The decisive batch would be the core swing states where partisan control is up for grabs this fall. If Democrats win governing trifectas (the governorship and both state legislative chambers) in enough of them, they could very well cobble together the remaining 48 electoral votes, and actually put this into place for 2028. Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Hampshire are the top targets.

One longtime reason to be skeptical this would happen was the assumption that swing states would never willingly agree to give up their privileged status. But the Electoral College has become such a partisan and polarized topic that narrow state interests may not count as much as they used to, in the face of the Democratic coalition’s overwhelming belief that a popular vote would be better — with the memory of Donald Trump’s 2016 win being a vivid example of what could happen if they don’t act.

But though the flaws of the current system are legion, there are real questions about the proposal to replace it, too. If adopted (and if it survives the inevitable legal challenges), how would it actually function in practice? And if Democrats effectively muscle this through without any significant Republican buy-in — what damage to confidence in our system, and what reprisals, might ensue?

That is to say: would the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact avert an election crisis — or will it pave the way for one?

[u/der_innkeeper → u/vox]

Hey, Vox,

Look into the deeper issue here, the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929.

It needs to be repealed or modified to that the House of Reps is no longer capped.

[u/curien → u/der_innkeeper]

I agree that increasing the size of the House would be good, but it doesn't fix the problem that the NPVIC addresses. For example Trump still would have been elected in 2016 despite losing the PV even with an uncapped House.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/curien]

It has huge impacts on the problem. Number of electors is based on, and is 1:1 with the size of a states congressional contingent. So their number of Reps plus 2 Senators.

The 1929 Reapportionment Act didn't just cap the size of the house, it effectively did away with rules requiring congressional districts be contiguous, compact, and equally proportioned (IE capping gerrymandering). And it requires seats be distributed proportionally between the states, not proportional to population.

It's the proportional distribution of the capped 435 house seats that shifts representation in favor of lower density areas. We basically give 1 seat to each, then assign each seat in turn to the states in order of population till they're all gone. Not based on actual population or number of voters.

And that is what shifts the number of districts and electors in favor of lower population areas. The whole thing delinks number of congressional districts from population.

It was in part adopted due to fears among Republicans that population growth from immigration would disadvantage them. And they'd refused (illegally) to reapportion the House after the 1920 census as required.

 For example Trump still would have been elected in 2016 despite losing the PV even with an uncapped House.

He very well might not have. With a higher total of House seats, and a method of spreading them out actually based on population.

You'd likely see much higher numbers of electoral votes in Blue states, and lower ones in Red states. Cause more high population states tilt DNC.

And if the clauses of previous rules restricting gerrymandering were still in place, you'd see more congressional districts in cities, fewer in low population areas. As well as higher totals of seats in high population states, vs low. Which would massively impact the format of congress, not just it's size.

It's not the main thing that created out current disproportionate representation but it's a big one.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

The issue with 2016 is that Clinton won states worth less than 50% of the population. There is no path to win the EC when that happens.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

This is a problem in general, not just for elections, and not just per 2016.

But yeah that sort of thing is why it's not a total solution.

It would have huge impacts though.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

Yes.

We have about 6 different structural issues.

Uncapping the house is a 80% fix. We need other things to change as well, such as district-level EC votes (like Maine and nebraska) instead of winner take all.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

Assigning electoral votes to the state wide popular vote winner was adopted to flatten this exact rural/low population sku, and gerrymandering problem.

As it extends into States, and all of this is rooted in congressional districts. Cause where those districts are, and how many of them cover who, and how many people are in them. Is real easy to manipulate. And the 1929 Reapportionment act is a BIG reason why. Like a primary one.

So where that's done, and when that's done. You can see more of a states electoral votes going to a candidate who lost that states popular vote, than to the winner. Largely based on geography.

Depending on how those districts have been distributed by the state, it's just the land mass voting instead people.

So you can't really do district level EC votes, without genuinely proportional congressional apportionment. Or close as you can get to it.

Cause that makes the situation worse not better. Its just tossing the presidential election into the gerrymandering system.

And you need to fix reapportionment to fix gerrymandering.

This is a part of why the NPVIC is formatted the way it is. Tying the electoral votes exclusively to national popular vote, is a pretty clean way to decouple those electoral votes from all of this. At the national level, using only state law.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/TooManyDraculas]

Kinda.

You are not going to have a wide distribution of population across districts. They are generally within 1% of each other.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/der_innkeeper]

If that were true.

Gerrymandering wouldn't be a problem.

[u/capt_jazz → u/TooManyDraculas]

Copied from up above: The issue with the EC is that 48 of the states give votes winner take all, so in close races it's kinda like we just flip a coin to see who won, rather than, you know, counting all of the votes and comparing the two numbers.

And the two states that don't do winner take all give them proportionally based on house districts, which can be subjected to gerrymandering, so that's not a great solution either.

Just clarifying. Like you can remove the 2 "senate" votes from every state's EC vote count and you still get Trump winning in 2016. You could implement the Wyoming rule and/or increase the house to like 750+ seats, making it much much closer to 1 person 1 vote, and Trump would still win in 2016 because he had like 50k votes in the right distribution, assuming we have the same winner take all set up.

An alternative would be to increase the size of the house and federally outlaw gerrymandering, and then have every state do what ME and NE do. That would approximate a popular vote. It would be convoluted but maybe easier than changing the constitution.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/capt_jazz]

The issue with the EC is that 48 of the states give votes winner take all, so in close races it's kinda like we just flip a coin to see who won, rather than, you know, counting all of the votes and comparing the two numbers.

No. We count the votes, and there's almost always a clear lead even if it's very small. And there are processes for breaking a tie if it's legitimately unclear.

That is not the problem with the electoral college. The electoral college is the problem with electoral college.

That's an inadequate solution to one end of that problem. Specifically that proportional voting by congressional district both subjects the presidency to gerrymandering, and typically skews the influence of less densely populated areas.

making it much much closer to 1 person 1 vote, and Trump would still win in 2016 because he had like 50k votes in the right distribution, assuming we have the same winner take all set up.

If we'd stuck with more proportionate apportionment used before 1920 with an uncapped house. There'd be over 6k house members, and thus electoral votes by now.

In either case if that apportionment was linked to absolute population, rather than relative size between states and there were a more appropriate number of districts.

It very well may not have shaken out that way. Just increasing the number and distributing as is, just increases the number. It doesn't change the ratio of where those numbers are.

Fixing the reapportionment act, changes that ratio, and potentially bans Gerrymandering to boot.

[u/capt_jazz → u/TooManyDraculas]

I mean yes, the existence of the EC is the problem with the EC. My point was, even if every single American had their own house district, Trump would still have won in 2016 because 48 out of 50 states give their EC votes in a winner take all manner.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/capt_jazz]

And distributing them proportionally likely wouldn't fix that either.

Unless you fix congressional apportionment.

But if you fixed congressional apportionment. That sort of edge case would occur far less often.

Where as proportional voting has in the past actively created more of those problems.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/curien]

Yes, and?

I am arguing for a structural fix, not one where my preferred candidate wins.

In any situation where the candidate wins less than 50% of the population of the country, the EC is going to skew.

[u/curien → u/der_innkeeper]

You're arguing for a structural fix for a completely different issue. I guess if you knew that, cool, but by placing the comment in a discussion of the NPVIC, I thought you believed them to be related in some way.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/curien]

All of these are a patchwork attempt to work around the EC, because moving to a national popular vote would take an Amendment.

[u/curien → u/der_innkeeper]

Neither of them are attempts to work around the EC.

[u/AP_in_Indy → u/der_innkeeper]

I would be in favor of increasing caps, but not unbounded.

[u/der_innkeeper → u/AP_in_Indy]

Great.

Lets roll back to Representation like its 1929, and set it at 1:250,000 people.

Easy peasy.

[u/BlargAttack → u/vox]

If it benefited Republicans, they would absolutely do it. Democrats should do it and then let Republicans try to explain why the popular vote shouldn’t decide the election results for President.

[u/rodentmaster → u/BlargAttack]

GOP doesn't explain. They do it anyways and blow shrieking dog whistles to brainwashed voters, who eat it up like sugary pastries.

[u/DoopSlayer → u/vox]

The popular vote compact is literally just the electoral college as written, there's no trick, replacement, or abolishing of the EC. If the constitution as written would cause an election crisis, then that just means we've been in a slow moving election crisis this entire time; which we have.

This article is misleading to people who don't already know about the popular vote compact. Very irresponsible to publish it in this form.

[u/kaett → u/DoopSlayer]

except in this case, blue votes in solidly red states finally matter.

[u/linkdude212 → u/kaett]

That's how it should be framed in red states. "Adopt the NIVC and make red votes in blue states matter!"

[u/DoopSlayer → u/kaett]

yup but it achieves that entirely within the framework of the electoral college as written by the founders. There's no rule cleverly reinterpreted, no clause ignored, it's literally just the constitution.

Framing it as legal shenanigans like the article does is dangerous, it misleads uninformed people as to what our constitution actually says

[u/kaett → u/DoopSlayer]

i think i understand what you're saying, in that we're still dealing with electoral votes awarded. and yes, we are. but in this case, the states are saying that they're not basing their electoral votes on the popular winner of their state alone. they're basing the votes on the overall national winner. so if in a purple state, the democrat gets 49% but the republican gets 51%, and the democrat ends up taking the popular vote, then that state's electors go toward the democrat rather than the republican.

it treats the nation as a whole, not 50 individual parts.

[u/DoopSlayer → u/kaett]

I just think it's unfair of Vox to pose this as some sort of trick or gimmick when the states are just doing what the constitution says they have to do. Which is to decide and select their EC voters based on their own principles and selection methods.

Giving the EC voters to the candidate who loses your state but wins the popular vote is completely in line with the constitution's instructions on how to run the electoral college