Of course it doesn't really matter. The Constitution means whatever you can bribe the Supreme Court to say it means. God Bless America.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionality_of_the_Natio...
At this point, of course there's always a risk that something could go awry, but I'm willing to accept the risks inherent in a one-person-one-vote system -- essentially an elective republic.
Both parties gerrymander. Both parties engage in "principled" discussions supporting positions seeking only expedient means to their practical objectives. I may be convinced that you believe in purely democratic election of the president, I'm not convinced that the Democratic party as an organization truly does.
I'm not a Republican. But I do like the existing system, where one house in the legislature represents the states, the other represents the people, and the executive is selected by the states with impunity regarding the criteria of selecting him. I'm also very happy that every state has independently decided that their citizens should be the arbiter of that outcome. I would not be happy with that though being encoded in such a way that this was not optional for states, I prefer the status quo, where it is just the stable state of the system and emergent out of existing incentives.
I'd be happier if the electoral college was closer to the popular vote, but my preferred method for achieving that would be the ratification of the congressional apportionment amendment, because it empowers the people at the expense of the federal government and the parties, and also empowers them in the legislature as well as the executive branch, whereas just direct vote only empowers them in the executive branch, not the legislature, and does so at the expense of the states and not at all at the expense of the parties.
It's true that the Democrats gerrymander. I think it gives them an advantage in Illinois and Massachusetts. I'm personally willing to give that up, and let my party take its chances in an elective republic.
I agree that your preferred method makes sense. I can't think of another way.
I don't believe that the House represents the people. In my state, the House delegation, and the state legislature, are effectively chosen by the ruling party through gerrymandering. This could be found to be illegal, since the Constitution requires the states to have a republican form of government. But I'm not sure I'm willing to take my chances with letting the Supreme Court decide on this right now.
I think that eliminating gerrymandering might have an impact on policy, since both parties would have to change how they appeal to voters.
Requiring representatives to represent a maximum number of people wouldn't eliminate gerrymandering, but it would significantly reduce it's efficacy. I think, districting based on geography is the ultimate cause of the problem, the theory goes that people in close proximity share interests, but we see that that's not really optimal. It would be nice if something like, people can form groups together in a state that would function like districts, with a maximum number of members, and a maximum number of groups based on the number of representatives in the state (which is of course a function of the total population in the state), and elect theirs, basically let the people self organize and voluntarily associate so they can maximize their representation. I'm sure there are unforeseen consequences to that, like unions dominating many representative groups, or issues local to a small region going unaddressed, but it's interesting to think about and there is an optimal solution to the gerrymandering issue that requires us to change the way we think of a representative constituency.
That seems like it would inevitably fall apart.
Also present a lot of mystery about "they going to do it?" and then someone doesn't and someone else chooses something else.
Talk about a mess for democracy ...
States can pick any means of selecting their electors that doesn’t conflict with other provisions of the Constitution. Obviously, a state imposing a requirement that electors be white or male would not fly.
OK, so they choose to have a state election. It must be a fair election, affording due process to all the voters as that is Constitutionally understood (one person, one vote, for example).
“We’ll have an election, but if national results go a different way, we’ll throw out the votes of the ‘wrong’ voters,” is … not that.
An analogy: Could the southern states agree to a compact to elect their governors by party slate? I doubt that would pass muster, and neither would the popular vote compact.
Similarly in the other direction: aside from DC, the most Democratic state was Vermont, which ignored its 31% of voters choosing Trump.
Now consider that these are the most extreme states, and by definition, all other states ignored larger proportion of voters through winner-takes-all. Arizona had 49.36% D vs 49.06% R. Did the republican vote matter? Barely 10k more votes and the whole state decides all of its 11 votes are for Biden.
Yet somehow, no riots, no overthrowing state governments. (Yes yes we eventually had riots but that's a different issue - they were totally okay with the rules, they just didn't like the results.)
Popular vote is basically "Our state decided to choose what the majority of Americans want. The people have spoken, and chose candidate X. We're now honoring the decision." There's no reason why it should fall apart any more than the electoral college should.
That's not the same thing at all.
In each of the seventeen states and DC, National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been passed by the state legislature, and signed by the executive branch, except for Hawaii (whose governor tried to veto it but it was overriden).
The bills followed all the proper steps to be signed into respective state's laws. It's not some kind of "agreement." It's the LAW. If you don't like it, feel free to go campaign in those states to change the LAW.
“We’re going to award our electors according to a compact never approved by Congress and that by design disenfranchises some fraction of our citizens who voted in a Federal election.”
People will accept a flawed mechanism that's been used for 200 years far more readily than a new slightly-less-flawed-but-still-flawed mechanism.
And every voting mechanism has trade-offs, so every mechanism has flaws from certain perspectives.
It's not election changing if one state, lets say accidentally, allows people to vote twice. It could effect their local outcomes, but if everyone votes twice, it should net itself. However, a fair election of the president would be completely fucked.
You propose a weakness in our election system where a conspiracy of state officials that wants to influence an election can control who is allowed to vote twice. If they can do this, they can already influence the outcome in their state.
Of course we see no such thing, because the elections are only administered at a state level, they are actually done at a local level, and there's quite a lot of observation and auditing that goes into verifying that things are done correctly.
Under popular vote, even the minimal vote margins are quite large because it's aggregated at the national scale - e.g., Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960 with only 0.17% difference in popular vote, which was still 113K votes.
To sway that election, you would've had to organize across multiple states to find a way to smuggle 113K votes illegally, while not getting any suspicions from poll workers and people tabulating results. And non of your co-conspirators should ever divulge it. It's so ridiculous that it approaches "9/11 was an insider job" territory.
That is quite a bit different than the popular vote as you can see this year when Trump would have basically run the board of electoral college votes without that caveat.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a way to choose the president by popular vote without the overhead of removing the electoral college.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
If you overlay the existing states that have passed the NPVIC over what Harris won, all but MN went blue. If the compact was active for 2024 with the current participating states, Harris would have only received the VA and NH electoral wins for a total of 17 votes. Trump would have 521 votes.
States without strict voter id still have mechanisms to ensure people who vote are real people and that they vote once. Strict voter id is security theater, though it does not reduce turn-out, either.[4]
[1] https://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/
[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/26/15424270/v...
[3] https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The...