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I have often fantasized (ever since 2004) about a Republican winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college and galvanizing support on the right for an EC reform amendment or more states signing into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but realistically I can't assume that Democrats would continue to be interested in such a reform after the EC turns out to benefit them, even if I can promise that I personally would.
Once Trump is gone, one way or another, there might be bipartisan interest in clarifying the scope of some executive privileges that he has laid claim to, but that all needs to be far enough in the rear view mirror, like FDR's four terms, for it to not get polarized.
The concept of contingent elections, where state delegations of House representatives choose the president in the case of no electoral college majority, will not last long after the next time one happens.
If a foreign adversary tries to take advantage of US weakness during a chaotic lame duck session, for example if Trump wins after a campaign promising to dismantle NATO and China thinks it's a good time to make a move on Taiwan while the US is distracted, we might get a new amendment like the 20th that shortens the lame duck period.
But I doubt you'd be able to pass anything more than boring no-brainer kind of amendments like the 27th. Maybe one that requires Officers of the US (maybe clarifying that to include the President) from trading stocks, but again, only after the immediate controversies with a partisan valence are well in the rear view mirror.
God. Electoral reform is my literal single issue. I don’t care if you are a convicted baby-eater, I’ll vote for you if you make it a campaign issue.
Now, if only anyone at our local level was actually interested in the subject…
reform how, and what's the value you see, if you don't mind me asking?
I think my phone ate a beautiful appeal to the national character, so…
Approval or ranked choice voting. Best chance to supersede existing partisan lines. Also improves skin in game. Downsides insignificant. Parties have no reason to adopt, so I will signal-boost as a local issue.
I think something to keep in mind here is that right leaning people (and to a lesser extent moderates) may now have a fear of anything related to updating election procedure because at this point they've had years and years of "lets make this common sense change that everyone can clearly agree on and has no downsides and absolutely does not privilege the Ds at the cost of the Rs" messaging.
This immune response can be pretty severe between all of the COVID related changes, calls for electoral college updates (and perhaps also fears about D's importing new voters).
It has the potential to pretty significantly hamper otherwise good ideas.
You might as well say registered Dems have been trained to think “voter suppression” when they hear “reform”, because that’s the messaging around ID requirements. Gerrymandering too, though it hasn’t been in the news as much.
In practice, yeah, the establishment would probably jump on all of these to discourage anyone from making the change. All the more reason to push local first.
Yeah not criticizing your approach or interests, I just have the suspicion that you might get confusingly aggressive pushback or skepticism (including on here) because of these events.
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I like the EC but prefer the Maine approach (ie overall winner gets the two votes; rest is district by district)
Why would you want gerrymandering to have more influence?
Why do you want machine politics to have more influence?
Yes, gerrymandering impacts races. But so do machine politics (and fraud). By making elections district level you limit the impact of machine politics and fraud. In addition, you change the nature of the presidential elections. Texas is now ripe for democrats to campaign in. Ditto California.
But this does it in a way that doesn’t create real incentive to cheat and still maintains some geographic overbalance for small states.
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If nothing else, the electoral college shields the country from various shenanigans that would happen if you opted for "sum vote totals from fifty different systems": Every state is incentivized to muck with its vote totals, especially with plausible deniability, and it's unclear what enforcement mechanisms the states would have to keep each other honest. IMO voter ID rules and election hardware security become even more contentious when every vote cast nationwide effects the outcome, and, say, Alabama "accidentally" certifying totals with three extra zeros at the end probably doesn't violate their laws. At least right now, the EC bounds state voting issues to only their own electoral votes.
Everyone adopting the Maine system is tolerably close, and doesn't have this problem. I think it's a reasonable choice.
The problem (which the Maine plan addresses quite well) is also that it heavily favors large states. California has 54 electoral votes, equal to 6 Alabamas. What this means is that winning California is hugely important, where a state with only 3 votes for all practical purposes doesn’t matter. And thus the concerns of states with huge EC counts have an outsized effect on federal policies— especially those that affect other states more. I think that’s why our regulations on land use end up wonky. They’re designed to work in urban areas where a wetland isn’t on simeone’s working farm, but on land that nobody wants or uses. If the president had to appeal to rural Alabama the way it has to appeal to LA, those kinds of things would be less likely.
You're conflating federal policy with House of Representatives party politics.
In American federal political terms, both California and Alabama are equally irrelevant, not important, because neither are particularly competitive in presidential campaigns. Presidents don't disproportionately consider the views of states that will go for them regardless, but rather for the states they need to woo to win.
Similarly, the Senate is infamously a body which gives disproportionate favor to smaller states. Flat voting weight regardless of population lets small states like Alabama extort larger states if the larger states want agreement- or at least a non-fillibuster- of their interests. The Senate is where most of the extortion-pork in budgets comes from, because it's the Senators who must be appeased.
In the House, disproportionate weight doesn't come from the voting strength (which is proportional), but rather the number of committe seats. Large states- particularly large mono-party states- can leverage their strength as a voting block to vote their members into key positions that mutually reinforce. What makes California so central in the House is the point that the California Democrats have so many of the votes not just in the Congress, but within the party.
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The Maine system is arguably even better to this end since it even further decentralizes things. No matter how sketchy the results are in Milwaukee or Atlanta or Detroit, there's a cap on how much damage you can do.
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