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New Mexico Is Latest State to Join National Popular Vote Compact

28 points by webmaven 8y ago

PHGamer 8y ago
this is stupid. the small states should not do this even if they dont get visits. you will be forced to follow california and new york always. but i guess the dems in NM want to spite trump.
- klipt 8y ago
  One person in a small state will have the same influence as one person in a large state. Currently only people in swing states have influence which is clearly stupid.
  - shaftway 8y ago
    He's right though. There's zero reason for a state like Wyoming to vote for this. Wyoming residents' votes for president are worth more than 3.8 times Florida residents' votes. I agree that it's stupid that they have that additional weight, but from their perspective it'd be stupid to pass something like this. 30 states/regions have more weight than the national average, and 20 have less weight. Louisiana is right at the national average.
yellowapple 8y ago
So how would it work if - like in the 2016 election - nobody actually got the majority of the popular vote?
- bobwaycott 8y ago
  The compact isn’t structured to award based on who gets the strict majority (>50%) vote. It’s structured to award electoral votes based on who wins the national popular vote, which means a plurality of votes cast. It’s the same way all but two states currently award their electoral votes, but the compact is tying it to the national—as opposed to state-level—popular vote. Had the compact been in effect for 2016, the US would have had its first female president—if I’ve understood it correctly.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    > plurality of votes cast So we'd be electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. Not really an improvement, since either way a minority of voters ends up winning the election. > the compact us tying it to the national - as opposed to state-level - popular vote In other words: the states are completely ignoring the voices of their own citizens and completely defeating the whole point of the Electoral College (especially in cases where, say, the majority or plurality of the state's voters voted against the plurality nationwide, in which case the state would be actively betraying its own citizens). There are surely better ways to fix our political system than to defenestrate what semblance of democracy we actually have (though I will admit that it's a good demonstration of the flaws of the Electoral College - in particular, the flaw that states are apparently not required to actually cast their votes according to the wishes of the citizens of those states).
    - bobwaycott 8y ago
      > So we'd be electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. No. The 2000 & 2016 elections—along with 3 others since 1824—saw a person elected despite the majority of voters who cast ballots voting against that individual—52% voted against Bush, 54% voted against Trump. Both elections saw the US electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. The compact is essentially an agreement to make presidential elections match up with the person who secures the most votes nationwide, which sure seems to be far closer to a democratic election than the indirect EC system which has, twice in recent memory, awarded the presidency against the wishes of the majority of voters who cast votes. No more playing the EC game—you either win the election with the most votes cast, or you don't win. The only other options would be far heavier overhauls of the voting system—ditching SMDP, and implementing a two-round system whereby we eventually end up with one person who gets >50% of the vote. That's unlikely to ever happen, as it would rely on a constitutional amendment, so the compact is leveraging the power states have to determine how they award their electoral votes—awarding them based on who secures the most votes nationwide so the elected president always matches the popular vote. Again, since US national elections already rely on getting the most votes, and not a true >50% majority of votes cast, this is likely the closest the US can get to a purely democratic presidential election without an amendment that removes the EC entirely and establishes a TRS election in its place to ensure there is always an undeniable majority winner.
1123581321 8y ago
I assume this will eventually gain enough support. The interesting question to me is how much longer that will have to take before the pact will affect the 2020 elections but not give one or both of the candidates enough time to adjust their strategy. It’s not simply a matter of a different flight schedule since campaign platforms/promises are crafted to appeal to voters in states where the vote outcome is unknowable.
mc32 8y ago
Doesn’t this dilute the value of your electoral college if they are bound by the national popular (plurality) vote? I’m not sure I agree with local votes being beholden to the national results. Doesn’t this kind of make complete landslides even more possible? Reagan I think almost had a complete victory but for one state which went for his challenger. In any case the campaigns will be forced to run in like four states, CA, TX, FL and NY. The rest will be bystanders, no?
- erentz 8y ago
  It makes the electoral college redundant, which it is intended to do. This is a work around instead of a constitutional amendment to remove the electoral college because that would be very difficult. Landslides aren’t a bad thing if that’s what people want. I’m not sure why you phrased it as if they were. The ideal would be for national popular vote using an instant runoff system (single transferable vote or ranked choice voting). In lieu of that the next best is plain first past the post with popular vote which this would gives when it reaches the required number. Now that way no matter where you live in the country your vote will still count. At the moment if you’re a blue voter in a predominantly red state or vice versa there is no reason for you to leave the house on Election Day. Under this system your vote still matters so you have a reason to cast it. More importantly presidential politics stops being beholden to the wishes of a minority in a few swing states and now has to consider the wishes of the whole national population everywhere.
  - xvedejas 8y ago
    Instant runoff voting is not obviously better than the current system, and in fact it might be worse. Not only does it still have issues with "vote splitting", it also has a property called non-monotonicity. This means you can hurt a candidate by ranking them higher, or help a candidate by ranking them lower. I find this to be a fairly dishonorable voting system to implement. If you want voting systems without these issues, you need range voting or condorcet voting.
- ianai 8y ago
  Actually eventually every state in the compact will be worth 270 votes or more. Immediately more important to “woo” than states not in the compact. The only thing against them is not having it go into partial effect.
acheron 8y ago
The whole idea is stupid. There's only two outcomes: the state votes the same way as the national vote, in which case this doesn't matter, or the state doesn't vote that way, in which case you're spiting your own state's voters in favor of voters elsewhere. Obviously they're all hoping to trick some other state into spiting its voters, but there's a bit of poker going on: if you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's you.
- brownbat 8y ago
  > you're spiting your own [preferences] in favor of voters elsewhere I think that's a beautiful way to describe democracy, though I know you didn't quite intend it that way. You're right that these proposals seem to run against everything game theory and rational voter models would suggest. But I think there's a way to couch this in terms of rational preferences, if you extend this beyond any one particular race. The setup: The fear is that in future elections, most of your state citizens might vote for the "popular" but not "electoral" winner. Flipping this would come at some other state's expense. Moreover, in every future contest with an electoral and popular vote split, the new system flips every state either from "winner" to "loser" or vice versa. You are essentially trading away all future elections where your state would back the unpopular electoral winner, and gaining all the future elections where your state would back the popular candidate with a bad map. That's not an even trade. Popular winners have more political capital. They can get more done than contentious winners. So swapping out all of your unpopular winners for popular winners in other elections nets your electorate more of its preferred policies in the long run. * * Slight tangent -- Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo recently explained why Mexico agreed to international dispute resolution, even though that constrained its government. Zedillo said, roughly, "We wanted to be part of a rules-based system because it works both ways. If you don't want to be subject to arbitrary actions, then you have to give assurances that you won't impose arbitrary actions on others." I know that's a really rough analogy, but this discussion reminded me of it, and I like the quote. https://www.tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/79-a-president-explains-mexican-trade/ https://www.tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/79-a-president-exp... Setup around ~9'50" EDIT: Some key assumptions required to make this work- a) your state is about equally or more likely to support unpopular electoral winners as it is to support popular losers, b) passing policies you support is better than avoiding policies you oppose. Those are pretty fragile assumptions, but they wouldn't be crazy to entertain for some fair chunk of the electorate. I suspect the more likely explanation is just that people think a national popular vote is more "fair" and aren't really methodically calculating self-interest in these contests, rational voter models be damned.
tdhoot 8y ago
This is futile for the time being. Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution provides that "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State“ Given Trump has publicly come out against this, it seems unlikely Congress will give assent to this anytime soon.
- webmaven 8y ago
  I don't think congress has much to say about how states allocate their electoral votes.
  - tdhoot 8y ago
    The being that states cannot enter in a compact with each other on how to allocate their votes without Congressional approval. I guess if each state individually decides this would be an interesting constitutional question.
Fjolsvith 8y ago
The national voter ID will make this moot. All the blue states will turn red when the illegals won't be able to vote.
- Fjolsvith 8y ago
  By the downvotes, this may be an unpopular opinion. However, it still stands unchallenged.

28 points by webmaven 8y ago

this is stupid. the small states should not do this even if they dont get visits. you will be forced to follow california and new york always. but i guess the dems in NM want to spite trump.

klipt 8y ago
One person in a small state will have the same influence as one person in a large state. Currently only people in swing states have influence which is clearly stupid.
- shaftway 8y ago
  He's right though. There's zero reason for a state like Wyoming to vote for this. Wyoming residents' votes for president are worth more than 3.8 times Florida residents' votes. I agree that it's stupid that they have that additional weight, but from their perspective it'd be stupid to pass something like this. 30 states/regions have more weight than the national average, and 20 have less weight. Louisiana is right at the national average.

yellowapple 8y ago

So how would it work if - like in the 2016 election - nobody actually got the majority of the popular vote?

bobwaycott 8y ago
The compact isn’t structured to award based on who gets the strict majority (>50%) vote. It’s structured to award electoral votes based on who wins the national popular vote, which means a plurality of votes cast. It’s the same way all but two states currently award their electoral votes, but the compact is tying it to the national—as opposed to state-level—popular vote. Had the compact been in effect for 2016, the US would have had its first female president—if I’ve understood it correctly.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  > plurality of votes cast So we'd be electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. Not really an improvement, since either way a minority of voters ends up winning the election. > the compact us tying it to the national - as opposed to state-level - popular vote In other words: the states are completely ignoring the voices of their own citizens and completely defeating the whole point of the Electoral College (especially in cases where, say, the majority or plurality of the state's voters voted against the plurality nationwide, in which case the state would be actively betraying its own citizens). There are surely better ways to fix our political system than to defenestrate what semblance of democracy we actually have (though I will admit that it's a good demonstration of the flaws of the Electoral College - in particular, the flaw that states are apparently not required to actually cast their votes according to the wishes of the citizens of those states).
  - bobwaycott 8y ago
    > So we'd be electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. No. The 2000 & 2016 elections—along with 3 others since 1824—saw a person elected despite the majority of voters who cast ballots voting against that individual—52% voted against Bush, 54% voted against Trump. Both elections saw the US electing someone against whom the actual majority of voters voted. The compact is essentially an agreement to make presidential elections match up with the person who secures the most votes nationwide, which sure seems to be far closer to a democratic election than the indirect EC system which has, twice in recent memory, awarded the presidency against the wishes of the majority of voters who cast votes. No more playing the EC game—you either win the election with the most votes cast, or you don't win. The only other options would be far heavier overhauls of the voting system—ditching SMDP, and implementing a two-round system whereby we eventually end up with one person who gets >50% of the vote. That's unlikely to ever happen, as it would rely on a constitutional amendment, so the compact is leveraging the power states have to determine how they award their electoral votes—awarding them based on who secures the most votes nationwide so the elected president always matches the popular vote. Again, since US national elections already rely on getting the most votes, and not a true >50% majority of votes cast, this is likely the closest the US can get to a purely democratic presidential election without an amendment that removes the EC entirely and establishes a TRS election in its place to ensure there is always an undeniable majority winner.

1123581321 8y ago

I assume this will eventually gain enough support. The interesting question to me is how much longer that will have to take before the pact will affect the 2020 elections but not give one or both of the candidates enough time to adjust their strategy. It’s not simply a matter of a different flight schedule since campaign platforms/promises are crafted to appeal to voters in states where the vote outcome is unknowable.

mc32 8y ago

Doesn’t this dilute the value of your electoral college if they are bound by the national popular (plurality) vote? I’m not sure I agree with local votes being beholden to the national results. Doesn’t this kind of make complete landslides even more possible? Reagan I think almost had a complete victory but for one state which went for his challenger. In any case the campaigns will be forced to run in like four states, CA, TX, FL and NY. The rest will be bystanders, no?

erentz 8y ago
It makes the electoral college redundant, which it is intended to do. This is a work around instead of a constitutional amendment to remove the electoral college because that would be very difficult. Landslides aren’t a bad thing if that’s what people want. I’m not sure why you phrased it as if they were. The ideal would be for national popular vote using an instant runoff system (single transferable vote or ranked choice voting). In lieu of that the next best is plain first past the post with popular vote which this would gives when it reaches the required number. Now that way no matter where you live in the country your vote will still count. At the moment if you’re a blue voter in a predominantly red state or vice versa there is no reason for you to leave the house on Election Day. Under this system your vote still matters so you have a reason to cast it. More importantly presidential politics stops being beholden to the wishes of a minority in a few swing states and now has to consider the wishes of the whole national population everywhere.
- xvedejas 8y ago
  Instant runoff voting is not obviously better than the current system, and in fact it might be worse. Not only does it still have issues with "vote splitting", it also has a property called non-monotonicity. This means you can hurt a candidate by ranking them higher, or help a candidate by ranking them lower. I find this to be a fairly dishonorable voting system to implement. If you want voting systems without these issues, you need range voting or condorcet voting.
ianai 8y ago
Actually eventually every state in the compact will be worth 270 votes or more. Immediately more important to “woo” than states not in the compact. The only thing against them is not having it go into partial effect.

acheron 8y ago

The whole idea is stupid. There's only two outcomes: the state votes the same way as the national vote, in which case this doesn't matter, or the state doesn't vote that way, in which case you're spiting your own state's voters in favor of voters elsewhere. Obviously they're all hoping to trick some other state into spiting its voters, but there's a bit of poker going on: if you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's you.

brownbat 8y ago
> you're spiting your own [preferences] in favor of voters elsewhere I think that's a beautiful way to describe democracy, though I know you didn't quite intend it that way. You're right that these proposals seem to run against everything game theory and rational voter models would suggest. But I think there's a way to couch this in terms of rational preferences, if you extend this beyond any one particular race. The setup: The fear is that in future elections, most of your state citizens might vote for the "popular" but not "electoral" winner. Flipping this would come at some other state's expense. Moreover, in every future contest with an electoral and popular vote split, the new system flips every state either from "winner" to "loser" or vice versa. You are essentially trading away all future elections where your state would back the unpopular electoral winner, and gaining all the future elections where your state would back the popular candidate with a bad map. That's not an even trade. Popular winners have more political capital. They can get more done than contentious winners. So swapping out all of your unpopular winners for popular winners in other elections nets your electorate more of its preferred policies in the long run. * * Slight tangent -- Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo recently explained why Mexico agreed to international dispute resolution, even though that constrained its government. Zedillo said, roughly, "We wanted to be part of a rules-based system because it works both ways. If you don't want to be subject to arbitrary actions, then you have to give assurances that you won't impose arbitrary actions on others." I know that's a really rough analogy, but this discussion reminded me of it, and I like the quote. https://www.tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/79-a-president-explains-mexican-trade/ https://www.tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/79-a-president-exp... Setup around ~9'50" EDIT: Some key assumptions required to make this work- a) your state is about equally or more likely to support unpopular electoral winners as it is to support popular losers, b) passing policies you support is better than avoiding policies you oppose. Those are pretty fragile assumptions, but they wouldn't be crazy to entertain for some fair chunk of the electorate. I suspect the more likely explanation is just that people think a national popular vote is more "fair" and aren't really methodically calculating self-interest in these contests, rational voter models be damned.

tdhoot 8y ago

This is futile for the time being. Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution provides that "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State“ Given Trump has publicly come out against this, it seems unlikely Congress will give assent to this anytime soon.

webmaven 8y ago
I don't think congress has much to say about how states allocate their electoral votes.
- tdhoot 8y ago
  The being that states cannot enter in a compact with each other on how to allocate their votes without Congressional approval. I guess if each state individually decides this would be an interesting constitutional question.

Fjolsvith 8y ago

The national voter ID will make this moot. All the blue states will turn red when the illegals won't be able to vote.

Fjolsvith 8y ago
By the downvotes, this may be an unpopular opinion. However, it still stands unchallenged.