Eh, I think giving every state an additional Senator and keeping the balance in the Electoral College is a lot more doable than abolishing the Electoral College.
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And since you had to be 21 and a property owner to vote far fewer were legally eligible to vote.
You don’t technically need an amendment for this. Your state could pass legislation to this effect tomorrow. All fifty states could. And should. But won’t.
So an amendment would force the issue but isn’t strictly necessary.
I know what requires an amendment, and I know what only requires normal legislation. What’s required doesn’t matter because nothing will ever change. We’re screwed.
I thought a bunch of states already agreed to switch to voting EC for whoever got the most votes. It only needs states with a majority of EC votes to agree. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
The only states that have agreed to the electoral vote compact are heavily Democratic states, with Colorado and Oregon being the most competitive of them. With Republicans controlling the legislature in so many battleground states, it isn’t happening.
I think the magnitude of some state gerrymanding doesn’t get enough attention. In WI, the Democrats had the majority of the votes in the last election, and R won 21/33 seats in the Senate.
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Oh Lord, where’s the AO thread on the NPVIC when I need it?
It’s a no-go. You only have blue states signing up. No, I do not count Colorado as a purple state.
So the first problem is that it’s very unlikely to get to 270. At this point most blue states are in and not a single red or purple state is in. No, I don’t think the Carolinas are going to approve it (it’s listed as pending in both states but that doesn’t mean much… most pending legislation fails).
The second problem is what happens when a state renegs on the compact? There is no possible mechanism for enforcement.
When a Republican wins the popular vote and loses the EC (as Mitt Romney was at one point projected to do in 2012), you honestly think that California and DC and Hawaii are going to just shrug their shoulders and send a slate of Republican electors?
What happens if they say they will but then they don’t??? What can anyone do about it?
There are unconstitutional state laws that claim that the state can overturn a faithless elector’s vote but none have ever been challenged and they are very clearly unconstitutional. An elector’s vote is his vote, end of discussion.
So if the state agrees to send Republican electors and then sends Democrats instead, or vice versa, there’s absolutely nothing anyone else can do about it. Texas has no standing to challenge California’s EVs and vice versa.
It’s a silly pipe dream.
I agree that we could improve things without an amendment.
However, the two states that have done this use (IMO) the worst method. They do winner-take-all for two votes. Then follow congressional districts for the others. This only goes part way to proportional. And, it is subject to any gerrymandering in the house districts.
Even a pure allocation by state-wide totals is subject to rounding because we have human electors.
Then we have the problem of requiring a majority. If a third party picks up a few EVs in some states, we could have no majority winner.
Completely agree. Maine & Nebraska are not proportional at all… they are WTA on a slightly smaller scale. Both states could be 51% / 49% and the 51% candidate would get every electoral vote.
And of course reasonable people can disagree about what proportional should look like. If Nebraska was 51% / 49% probably we could all agree that the 51% candidate should get 3 votes and the 49% candidate should get 2 votes.
But what if Maine is 51% / 49%? Should it be 2-2? Or 3-1?
The former means there’s really no advantage to winning Maine at all. The latter means that Maine (+2 EVs) is actually a bigger prize than Nebraska (+1EV), despite being a less populous state.
It’s an interesting question, IMO.
Yep. That’s why a constitutional amendment that eliminates the human electors (and also allows for plurality winners) is better.
Although in this simple case I’d use traditional rounding. 51% and 49% means 2.04 and 1.96 electors. I’d round to 2-2. I don’t have any reason to give some preference to the side that was a bare “winner”.
It’s a much better system than what’s in place now.
Change is only impossible if you’re lazy.
Women voting was a pipe dream until it wasn’t …
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Somewhat related:
Not everywhere.
Only in places wuth the most people.
Maybe that’s better, but zero sum
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Some other countries like Canada have gone through the hoops and the extreme political pain to modernize their constitutions but there is a general acceptance that the USA is unable to accomplish anything meaningful in this regard. A bit depressing that significant change is impossible for us.
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In a democracy, that sounds like what would make the most sense…
Don’t the land and cows get to have a say in things?
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Butter Face rather than Butter Cow imo 
(if you’re gonna body shame, at least be accurate)