The scenario we see as the most alarming was made possible by the Supreme Court itself. In a 2020 decision, the court held, in our reading, that state legislatures have the power to direct electors on how to cast their electoral votes. And this opens the door to what we think is the most dangerous strategy: that a legislature would pass a law that directs electors to vote for the candidate the legislature picks.
We desperately need the national popular vote. 80% of the votes in the upcoming election may as well be ignored.
If we’re doing npv, can we go a step further to ranked choice please? Npv is better than EC but falls into the same two party pitfalls.
Agreed the EC is bunk and needs to go but NPV seems like a Swiss cheese solution that will never work.
Energies are better spent elsewhere for now.
Edit: Yes, it’s attractive in its simplicity, but here are two pitfalls that come to mind:
- Only blue states will enact it, so its reach will be limited
- Unless controls against dropping out are somehow enshrined, it will only take one purple state to get hijacked and drop out, nullifying the purpose
.
Energies elsewhere including:- Preserving and defending the democracy we have vs. chasing what is mostly a distant distraction
- Working toward voting integrity
- Pushing for hand marked paper ballots and tabulation audits to ensure accuracy in vote totals
- Counteracting disinformation and foreign interference
- etc.
…NPV seems like a Swiss cheese solution that will never work.
It seems like a simple premise to me. The candidate with the most votes wins. What am I missing?
I do agree that efforts are best made elsewhere at this time. Sadly, that case can probably always be made, which is why we may never have a properly functioning democracy.
I feel like “efforts can be best made elsewhere” needs to be qualified with where that is
It won’t happen before November, and a lot is on the line. We can always do more than one thing at a time, but it’s difficult to get anyone to do anything in the first place.
Change as you’re describing will never happen if Republicans control any part of governemnt. Change also won’t happen under Democrats unless it’s aligned with corporate interests, tho, Democrats are conciliatory to social change once protesting starts to damage profitability.
I wish I were wrong about that, but that’s the options we have. Authoritarian’s backed by Big Oil or the public punching bag to oligarchical authoritarianism. Progressives might be moving the platform but the likelihood of public interest resulting in the passing of law is still statistically null, which has been quantifiably proven multiple times over the past 30 years.
We are free to spend our money on the things that keep us productive workers and that’s it. In my eyes that’s just slavery with more steps.
3rd party candidates still don’t have a chance because they “can’t get the votes” Ranked choice is basically npv, but I can have my first choice be the person I don’t think will have enough, then fall back to the big parties as necessary.
Yes, it’s attractive in its simplicity, but here are two pitfalls that come to mind:
- Only blue states will enact it, so its reach will be limited
- Unless controls against dropping out are somehow enshrined, it will only take one purple state to go red and drop out, nullifying the purpose
NPV seems a bit convoluted, but it is the only way to make the Electoral College irrelevant without a change to the Constitution. And our politicians can’t decide on a budget, they will never decide on an amendment in this political environment.
A party could also just remove delegates from any state that habitually votes for a more progressive option than the party wants…
It literally just happened in NH, but everyone is pretending it’s not an issue.
But if some billionaires bought off the right people running the DNC, at any general election they can wait till the last minute and nominate an actual Republican as the Dem candidate and there wouldn’t be a damn thing anyone can do.
I don’t know why no one wants to address this until it happens.
Didn’t we just learn from Trump’s four years that we can’t relay on people doing what they should and that we need to cosidy this shit so that we know the parties have to do the right thing?
Thw Florida legislature is trying to pass a law that would give Trump $5m because why the fuck not? Republicans have stopped hiding their motives because the system is too broken for the people to change it
Thw Florida legislature is trying to pass a law that would give Trump $5m because why the fuck not?
Not really. Someone proposed that (absolutely ridiculous) bill, there was no suggestion it would ever get to the floor, DeSantis said he’d veto it anyway, and it was withdrawn.
Just because a bill is proposed doesn’t mean it has a snowball’s chance in Florida to even make it to committee, let alone even get to the point where a full legislative body can vote on it.
This is so absurd it’s basically a lie. The Supreme Court upheld a states right to force electors to vote for the person they pledged to vote for. It doesn’t mean that a legislature could just pick a candidate that didn’t win the election. To do that, the legislature would have to pass laws to change the existing election rules in the state, which also would require the governor to approve.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After the assault on the nation’s Capitol three years ago, we worked through every strategy we could imagine for subverting the popular will by manipulating the law.
We also concluded that the most blatantly extreme strategies, such as a state canceling its election and selecting its electors directly, are politically unlikely.
The electors, the Supreme Court decided, had no constitutional right to resist the laws in a state that directed how they must vote.
The danger now is that this decision has created an obvious strategy for a state legislature seeking to ensure the election of its preferred candidate, regardless of how the people voted.
There are plenty of mechanisms to ensure that the election selects the right slate of electors — recounts, contest proceedings and so on.
Absent that turn of events, in the rush between an election and the day when electors actually cast their votes, there may well be no time for the court to close the loophole that its opinion opened.
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