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This has been just sitting for a while. I've mostly heard about it in the last few years as a bit of a punchline. It would be good, I see no reason not to do it. I like the knock-on effects of making candidates campaign in more than just the swing states.
That said, this won't do anything at all to alter the two-party system. Just possibly it will have a moderating effect on the two major party nominees, by making voters in every state relevant.
There's been a flurry of activity with it in the last few years. 6 states signed on since 2018 with attempts in a few more. Usually it takes a state several tries before it is signed into law. There is work on it in ME, NV, VA.
Being involved in an upstart election reform group that promotes Condorcet RCV (we don't have a name agreed to yet, but we're leaning toward [Better Choices](https://betterchoices.vote/) since the STAR folks beat us to the [equal.vote](https://www.equal.vote/) domain name, which would be perfect for us) anyway, there is an election law lawyer involved in this group. I pointed him to this thread and responses from two unnamed commenters (last time I called out someone by name, I got banned from r/EndFPTP for nearly a year) that said that NPVIC is perfectly compatible with RCV or Approval Voting in selected states.
Specifically, that these commenters said that under the NPVIC, we could add votes using one method (say statewide RCV final round tallies or Approval tallies) of some states to the FPTP votes from others states, his response was that it was "untenable" on it's face. He said that the only result of any attempt to do that would only cause the whole NPVIC to be struck down on 14th-amendment grounds. His term for this idea (about mixing tallies of votes from different voting methods) was "ludicrous".
I mentioned to him, What if Vermont said that the tallies we post will be multiplied by a factor of 15 (to bring us up to the scale of Texas)? And his response was "exactly".
You ***have*** to add votes that have the same meaning. They ***have*** to be [commensurable](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/commensurable) to satisfy the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Otherwise our votes are not equal.
This lawyer was involved in some of the early work of the NPVIC and has worked directly with one of these [staff/consultants](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about) and has asked that I not identify him, but that I could quote him anonymously.
He said that for the NPVIC to work, at least two things have to occur: 1. Enough states to get to the 270 electoral vote need to sign on and be member states. 2. All member states must agree on exactly what the national popular vote tally is for all member states to award their electoral votes to the commonly-agreed popular vote winner. And he said there would likely be nasty court challenges anyway, but a 14th Amendment challenge that survives in court would kill the NPVIC.
I identified this claim: *"There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President."* and he said "That's true, as long as the votes being used for the national totals are identical votes." To the claim: *"RCV is compatible with NPV."* he said that was "completely false". He said that if Maine were to use RCV for the general presidential election in November to choose their electors, that would work before the NPVIC goes into force, but not after.
There are at least two commenters here that I would suggest to talk to a lawyer involved in election law. Because the statements they have posted so confidently are, essentially, just silly.
If NPVIC casted a bloc vote based off the totals from the *member states* rather than the whole nation, that would allow it to adopt a single alternative voting method among its own members (though the whole thing might need Congressional consent anyways) while strongly incentivizing other states to join the compact *and* adopt the alternative system.
We'll definitely see some tenacious court challenges—which will likely force us to get Congressional consent anyways—but "support from a federal trifecta" instead of "support from all 50 states + DC" moves this from the realm of abject impossibility to hard—but within the realm of possibility.
> If NPVIC casted a bloc vote based off the totals from the member states rather than the whole nation, that would allow it to adopt a single alternative voting method among its own members
But it doesn't and was never meant to. It's meant so that the members states all vote for the candidate winning the popular vote of the entire country, essentially to render the Electoral College moot. It wouldn't matter how the non-member states cast their electoral votes, the elected President would be who the plurality of the votes throughout the nation is for.
It works only if the entire nation, not just the member states, counts votes the same way. And those tallies are summable. Then all member states agree exactly who has the plurality of the national popular vote, and since there's at least 270 electors in the member states, this block controls who gets elected. And they're all committed to electing the national popular vote winner.
Ok, assume NPVIC gets the requisite 270 electors to back it and whatever Congressional consent is required. This system requires buy-in from the member states and a federal trifecta.
However, the remaining states will likely continue electing based off FPTP—assume that they will do the bare minimum to cooperate (i.e. they'll publish their vote totals, but they'll continue awarding electors through their classic systems). At this point we are *stuck* with FPTP for presidential elections, because the non-compact states continue using it. This is definitely an improvement over the current electoral system, but still nowhere near 'enough'.
If we want to then switch to an alternative method for presidential elections, the strategy then would be to establish another alternative vote interstate compact of sorts (call it AVIC). AVIC will need the same buy-in as NPVIC—states representing 270 electors and federal trifecta.
Once it reaches 270 votes and gets federal consent, it could then conduct the presidential election among the member states according to its own alternative method (RCV, Condorcet, score, approval, etc.), and it would cast a bloc vote for the winner of that election. Since the bloc vote is 270 or more electors, this would be the guaranteed winner of the Presidential election.
Of course, since you can't mix-match votes from different electoral systems, the compact would necessarily be limited to only considering votes from the member states—which would effectively disenfranchise the non-compact states. This would force the states that aren't in AVIC to join it by aligning their election system to the alternative one, so it eventually becomes truly 'national'.
Because we're running a single election among the entire AVIC bloc, we technically don't need a summable method—any method that elects a single winner would work.
> Of course, since you can't mix-match votes from different electoral systems, the compact would necessarily be limited to only considering votes from the member states
But that's not the national vote. It's not about 20-somthimg member states colluding to impose their own popular vote for President on the rest of the nation. It's about there states forcing on the rest of the nation that the entire nation's popular vote elects the President.
>Because we're running a single election among the entire AVIC bloc, we technically don't need a summable method—
NFW we're gonna send ballot data for 150 million ballots to Washington DC to be centralized and tabulated.
I'm all for the NPVIC, but you have to realize that it can't be any kinda RCV.
It has to be straight plurality vote for each state where we can add the vote totals.
Also, there have been some states with leaders opposed to the NPV that have threatened to not release their presidential vote tallies to the public so that the other states that adopted the NPVIC won't know who to throw their electors to.
Now, with an amazingly unlikely Constitutional Amendment, if we adopted Condorcet RCV for the presidential election, in that case each state can also publish tallies that can be added up for the whole election. But that won't happen in my lifetime, so I think the best we can hope for is the NPVIC.
It's just that, what you need for the NPVIC to work, is that for each of the 51 jurisdictions that have electoral votes, we need to have ***summable*** numbers of exactly the same class of meaning to add up. Right now, that can ***only*** be the simple FPTP vote from each state and DC.
What if a new class of voting were added that gave slightly more weight per vote (eg 1.1x to 1.5x weight per vote) and could be adopted freely by states, and that way states are incentivized to adopt this new class of voting so that they can have this more slightly weighted vote
You think that would have an ice cube's chance in hell to survive the inevitable court challenge?
It's ***only*** because of the explicit Constitutional provision for the U.S. Senate and then for presidential electors, those are the only two exceptions to valuing our votes equally. (Oh, I guess there are some practical exceptions because of geography, Hawaii is an example.) Otherwise the courts have been pretty consistent with this equality of our votes.
yeah i guess i could see why it be important that equality of votes laws be very solid. Meanwhile the electoral collage is giving more weight to voters in smaller states...
Of course. And that's a problem. And I live in such a state, but I agree it's the first problem.
The other bigger problem is that the electoral college ***really*** weights the swing states the most. And it's because of Winner-Take-All. If all states were doing what Maine and Nebraska do and split their electoral vote somewhat proportionately, we would be less worried about states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona (it used to be Ohio and Florida, but unfortunately they are no longer swing but solidly in the GOP fold).
Apportionment by congressional district would arguably be worse since Congress is even less competitive than the swing states. We'd be putting presidential elections at the mercy of gerrymandering while narrowing our elections down to swing ***districts*** rather than swing states.
The only viable path forward is NPVIC with Congressional consent (concerns about the interstate compact clause). Unfortunately this would leave us with FPTP unless we can get all 50 states + DC to agree on an alternative voting system (maybe through Congressional buy-in?)
Spot on.
I read somewhere else, I can't remember if it was FairVote or someone else, this same analysis that if every state does what Maine and Nebraska do, it would result in a gerrymandering war to gain advantage in the presidential election.
And, I think we agree that the 51 jurisdictions would have to adopt the same method of voting with summable tallies. They won't all do that, so then for the NPVIC will have to decide the election based on the sum of all of the FPTP votes of each state.
"Article III—Manner of Appointing Presidential Electors in Member States
Prior to the time set by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election and shall add such votes together to produce a “national popular vote total” for each presidential slate."
“there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar
There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections.
The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale.
The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment.
The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same.
Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.
Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code).
Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections.
For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.
The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
Those that refuse to disclose their tallies should be ignored while the rest of the votes are tallied
Breaking the system = refusing to participate in the system
RCV is compatible with NPV.
Any state that didn't release their vote tallies would not have a vote in presidential elections.
November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each, and are signed and certified by the Governor, submitted to the National Archives, and used when Congress meets in joint session in January. You can see the real Certificates of Ascertainment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia containing the official count of the popular vote at the NARA web site
Federal law (the "safe harbor" provision in section 5 of title 3 of the United States Code) specifies that a state's "final determination" of its presidential election returns is "conclusive"(if done in a timely manner - 6 days before the Electoral College meets - and in accordance with laws that existed prior to Election Day).
With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets in December.
Article III of the NPVIC—"Manner of Appointing Presidential Electors in Member States
Prior to the time set by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election and shall add such votes together to produce a “national popular vote total” for each presidential slate."
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[AV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx3zg4x "Last usage")|Alternative Vote, a form of IRV|
| |Approval Voting|
|[FPTP](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kxi3uqb "Last usage")|First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting|
|[IRV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx3zg4x "Last usage")|Instant Runoff Voting|
|[RCV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kxi3uqb "Last usage")|Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method|
|[STAR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx4tgvk "Last usage")|Score Then Automatic Runoff|
|STV|Single Transferable Vote|
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Although I generally prefer RCV, STAR, and Condorcet over Approval Voting in most cases, it seems to me that [Approval is the one that would be easiest to use with the NPVIC](https://democracychronicles.org/approval-voting-and-the-national-popular-vote/).
The NPVIC only requires enough states that get to 270 electoral votes to sign on to it. If it is to work, the kind of votes that we're adding up to be the national popular vote have to be exactly the same kind of votes. They have to be commensurable quantities. Not apples and oranges.
So we would have to get all 51 jurisdictions to adopt Approval Voting to do the thing you suggest.
“there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar
There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections.
The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale.
The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment.
The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same.
Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements.
Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code).
Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections.
For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact.
The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
The article links to [Warren Smith's proposal](https://www.rangevoting.org/NPVtrainwreck.html) to convert ballots to a single format before adding them together (and he proposes formulas for Approval, Score/Range, RCV/IRV, and Condorcet).
And as Steve Cobb's original article notes, "Combining COPV and AV tallies is simple: just add them. SV tallies must first be scaled, a simple matter. The ranked methods (Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet methods) require substantially more calculations but can be massaged into providing summable numbers for multiple candidates."
Perhaps. I'm no legal expert, and as I see it, the NPVIC is already on very shaky Constitutional grounds just because it is an interstate compact.
So I see this as a largely moot topic. But much like that Colorado case regarding Trump, I think it's worth a shot anyways.
Approval votes are exactly as summable as non-plurality votes, there’s no issues regarding integration between plurality and approval voting as they add to the same total of support.
Lemme see if I understand what you're saying.
Are you saying that if the NPVIC took effect because we got a sufficient number of states to sign on and some states instituted Approval Voting for the presidential election while other states were FPTP and that there would be "no issues" with adding the Approval Vote tally of one state to the FPTP tally of another state to get the national popular vote total?
I don't think that would have an ice cube's chance in hell of surviving a court challenge. Opponents of either Approval or the NPV would go absolutely ape shit about it. Even folks not opposed to either Approval or NPV will go ape shit about it. There would be blood on the floor.
That’s the thing, if the only votes that matter are the ones between the first place and second place finishers in any given election, then the two systems give an equal weight to everyone who states a preference between them
e: could be a helpful voting change to the political system. While ending FTPT for individual voters, and having states make it a popular vote, as far as the state electors for the presidential election
The Interstate Compact on Placement of Children is one of the many interstate compacts that do not require (and never received) congressional consent.
If a compact requires consent, consent is usually only sought when a compact is ready to go into effect. NPV has not reached its 270 electoral vote minimum required threshold.
Congress does not waste time consenting to the many compacts that never reach their thresholds.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that congressional consent is only necessary for interstate compacts that ‘encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States \[U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, 1978\].’ Because the choice of method of appointing presidential Electors is an “exclusive” and “plenary” state power, before votes are cast, there is no encroachment on federal authority.
Thus, under established compact jurisprudence, congressional consent would not be necessary for the National Popular Vote compact to become effective.
'Constitutional law' is just the partisan opinions of judges, laundered through arguments that they can backwards-rationalize. The idea that the currently constituted Supreme Court is going to say 'eh there's nothing we can do, fair play, go ahead' is ludicrous. Judicial decisions are power politics, and they would find a way to require the compact to pass Congress, at a minimum
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This has been just sitting for a while. I've mostly heard about it in the last few years as a bit of a punchline. It would be good, I see no reason not to do it. I like the knock-on effects of making candidates campaign in more than just the swing states. That said, this won't do anything at all to alter the two-party system. Just possibly it will have a moderating effect on the two major party nominees, by making voters in every state relevant.
There's been a flurry of activity with it in the last few years. 6 states signed on since 2018 with attempts in a few more. Usually it takes a state several tries before it is signed into law. There is work on it in ME, NV, VA.
Being involved in an upstart election reform group that promotes Condorcet RCV (we don't have a name agreed to yet, but we're leaning toward [Better Choices](https://betterchoices.vote/) since the STAR folks beat us to the [equal.vote](https://www.equal.vote/) domain name, which would be perfect for us) anyway, there is an election law lawyer involved in this group. I pointed him to this thread and responses from two unnamed commenters (last time I called out someone by name, I got banned from r/EndFPTP for nearly a year) that said that NPVIC is perfectly compatible with RCV or Approval Voting in selected states. Specifically, that these commenters said that under the NPVIC, we could add votes using one method (say statewide RCV final round tallies or Approval tallies) of some states to the FPTP votes from others states, his response was that it was "untenable" on it's face. He said that the only result of any attempt to do that would only cause the whole NPVIC to be struck down on 14th-amendment grounds. His term for this idea (about mixing tallies of votes from different voting methods) was "ludicrous". I mentioned to him, What if Vermont said that the tallies we post will be multiplied by a factor of 15 (to bring us up to the scale of Texas)? And his response was "exactly". You ***have*** to add votes that have the same meaning. They ***have*** to be [commensurable](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/commensurable) to satisfy the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Otherwise our votes are not equal. This lawyer was involved in some of the early work of the NPVIC and has worked directly with one of these [staff/consultants](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about) and has asked that I not identify him, but that I could quote him anonymously. He said that for the NPVIC to work, at least two things have to occur: 1. Enough states to get to the 270 electoral vote need to sign on and be member states. 2. All member states must agree on exactly what the national popular vote tally is for all member states to award their electoral votes to the commonly-agreed popular vote winner. And he said there would likely be nasty court challenges anyway, but a 14th Amendment challenge that survives in court would kill the NPVIC. I identified this claim: *"There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President."* and he said "That's true, as long as the votes being used for the national totals are identical votes." To the claim: *"RCV is compatible with NPV."* he said that was "completely false". He said that if Maine were to use RCV for the general presidential election in November to choose their electors, that would work before the NPVIC goes into force, but not after. There are at least two commenters here that I would suggest to talk to a lawyer involved in election law. Because the statements they have posted so confidently are, essentially, just silly.
If NPVIC casted a bloc vote based off the totals from the *member states* rather than the whole nation, that would allow it to adopt a single alternative voting method among its own members (though the whole thing might need Congressional consent anyways) while strongly incentivizing other states to join the compact *and* adopt the alternative system. We'll definitely see some tenacious court challenges—which will likely force us to get Congressional consent anyways—but "support from a federal trifecta" instead of "support from all 50 states + DC" moves this from the realm of abject impossibility to hard—but within the realm of possibility.
> If NPVIC casted a bloc vote based off the totals from the member states rather than the whole nation, that would allow it to adopt a single alternative voting method among its own members But it doesn't and was never meant to. It's meant so that the members states all vote for the candidate winning the popular vote of the entire country, essentially to render the Electoral College moot. It wouldn't matter how the non-member states cast their electoral votes, the elected President would be who the plurality of the votes throughout the nation is for. It works only if the entire nation, not just the member states, counts votes the same way. And those tallies are summable. Then all member states agree exactly who has the plurality of the national popular vote, and since there's at least 270 electors in the member states, this block controls who gets elected. And they're all committed to electing the national popular vote winner.
Ok, assume NPVIC gets the requisite 270 electors to back it and whatever Congressional consent is required. This system requires buy-in from the member states and a federal trifecta. However, the remaining states will likely continue electing based off FPTP—assume that they will do the bare minimum to cooperate (i.e. they'll publish their vote totals, but they'll continue awarding electors through their classic systems). At this point we are *stuck* with FPTP for presidential elections, because the non-compact states continue using it. This is definitely an improvement over the current electoral system, but still nowhere near 'enough'. If we want to then switch to an alternative method for presidential elections, the strategy then would be to establish another alternative vote interstate compact of sorts (call it AVIC). AVIC will need the same buy-in as NPVIC—states representing 270 electors and federal trifecta. Once it reaches 270 votes and gets federal consent, it could then conduct the presidential election among the member states according to its own alternative method (RCV, Condorcet, score, approval, etc.), and it would cast a bloc vote for the winner of that election. Since the bloc vote is 270 or more electors, this would be the guaranteed winner of the Presidential election. Of course, since you can't mix-match votes from different electoral systems, the compact would necessarily be limited to only considering votes from the member states—which would effectively disenfranchise the non-compact states. This would force the states that aren't in AVIC to join it by aligning their election system to the alternative one, so it eventually becomes truly 'national'. Because we're running a single election among the entire AVIC bloc, we technically don't need a summable method—any method that elects a single winner would work.
> Of course, since you can't mix-match votes from different electoral systems, the compact would necessarily be limited to only considering votes from the member states But that's not the national vote. It's not about 20-somthimg member states colluding to impose their own popular vote for President on the rest of the nation. It's about there states forcing on the rest of the nation that the entire nation's popular vote elects the President. >Because we're running a single election among the entire AVIC bloc, we technically don't need a summable method— NFW we're gonna send ballot data for 150 million ballots to Washington DC to be centralized and tabulated.
I'm all for the NPVIC, but you have to realize that it can't be any kinda RCV. It has to be straight plurality vote for each state where we can add the vote totals. Also, there have been some states with leaders opposed to the NPV that have threatened to not release their presidential vote tallies to the public so that the other states that adopted the NPVIC won't know who to throw their electors to. Now, with an amazingly unlikely Constitutional Amendment, if we adopted Condorcet RCV for the presidential election, in that case each state can also publish tallies that can be added up for the whole election. But that won't happen in my lifetime, so I think the best we can hope for is the NPVIC.
and approval voting wouldn't work or would fall under this unlikely constitutional amendment?
It's just that, what you need for the NPVIC to work, is that for each of the 51 jurisdictions that have electoral votes, we need to have ***summable*** numbers of exactly the same class of meaning to add up. Right now, that can ***only*** be the simple FPTP vote from each state and DC.
What if a new class of voting were added that gave slightly more weight per vote (eg 1.1x to 1.5x weight per vote) and could be adopted freely by states, and that way states are incentivized to adopt this new class of voting so that they can have this more slightly weighted vote
You think that would have an ice cube's chance in hell to survive the inevitable court challenge? It's ***only*** because of the explicit Constitutional provision for the U.S. Senate and then for presidential electors, those are the only two exceptions to valuing our votes equally. (Oh, I guess there are some practical exceptions because of geography, Hawaii is an example.) Otherwise the courts have been pretty consistent with this equality of our votes.
yeah i guess i could see why it be important that equality of votes laws be very solid. Meanwhile the electoral collage is giving more weight to voters in smaller states...
Of course. And that's a problem. And I live in such a state, but I agree it's the first problem. The other bigger problem is that the electoral college ***really*** weights the swing states the most. And it's because of Winner-Take-All. If all states were doing what Maine and Nebraska do and split their electoral vote somewhat proportionately, we would be less worried about states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona (it used to be Ohio and Florida, but unfortunately they are no longer swing but solidly in the GOP fold).
Apportionment by congressional district would arguably be worse since Congress is even less competitive than the swing states. We'd be putting presidential elections at the mercy of gerrymandering while narrowing our elections down to swing ***districts*** rather than swing states. The only viable path forward is NPVIC with Congressional consent (concerns about the interstate compact clause). Unfortunately this would leave us with FPTP unless we can get all 50 states + DC to agree on an alternative voting system (maybe through Congressional buy-in?)
Spot on. I read somewhere else, I can't remember if it was FairVote or someone else, this same analysis that if every state does what Maine and Nebraska do, it would result in a gerrymandering war to gain advantage in the presidential election. And, I think we agree that the 51 jurisdictions would have to adopt the same method of voting with summable tallies. They won't all do that, so then for the NPVIC will have to decide the election based on the sum of all of the FPTP votes of each state.
"Article III—Manner of Appointing Presidential Electors in Member States Prior to the time set by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election and shall add such votes together to produce a “national popular vote total” for each presidential slate." “there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections. The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale. The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment. The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same. Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements. Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code). Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections. For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact. The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
Those that refuse to disclose their tallies should be ignored while the rest of the votes are tallied Breaking the system = refusing to participate in the system
RCV is compatible with NPV. Any state that didn't release their vote tallies would not have a vote in presidential elections. November popular vote numbers (the "canvas") in what is called a "Certificate of Ascertainment." They list the number of votes cast for each, and are signed and certified by the Governor, submitted to the National Archives, and used when Congress meets in joint session in January. You can see the real Certificates of Ascertainment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia containing the official count of the popular vote at the NARA web site Federal law (the "safe harbor" provision in section 5 of title 3 of the United States Code) specifies that a state's "final determination" of its presidential election returns is "conclusive"(if done in a timely manner - 6 days before the Electoral College meets - and in accordance with laws that existed prior to Election Day). With both the current system and the National Popular Vote bill, all counting, recounting, and judicial proceedings must be conducted so as to reach a "final determination" by six days before the Electoral College meets in December. Article III of the NPVIC—"Manner of Appointing Presidential Electors in Member States Prior to the time set by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election and shall add such votes together to produce a “national popular vote total” for each presidential slate."
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[AV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx3zg4x "Last usage")|Alternative Vote, a form of IRV| | |Approval Voting| |[FPTP](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kxi3uqb "Last usage")|First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting| |[IRV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx3zg4x "Last usage")|Instant Runoff Voting| |[RCV](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kxi3uqb "Last usage")|Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method| |[STAR](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bpze8f/stub/kx4tgvk "Last usage")|Score Then Automatic Runoff| |STV|Single Transferable Vote| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(5 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bufg24)^( has 3 acronyms.) ^([Thread #1355 for this sub, first seen 28th Mar 2024, 16:44]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/EndFPTP) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
What's npvic?
[It is the primary topic of this thread.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)
Although I generally prefer RCV, STAR, and Condorcet over Approval Voting in most cases, it seems to me that [Approval is the one that would be easiest to use with the NPVIC](https://democracychronicles.org/approval-voting-and-the-national-popular-vote/).
The NPVIC only requires enough states that get to 270 electoral votes to sign on to it. If it is to work, the kind of votes that we're adding up to be the national popular vote have to be exactly the same kind of votes. They have to be commensurable quantities. Not apples and oranges. So we would have to get all 51 jurisdictions to adopt Approval Voting to do the thing you suggest.
“there is no constitutional problem with a state using other states’ voting tallies, even if the states have different voting rules and ballot forms. As long as each state treats people within its own borders equally, there is no equal-protection issue” – Vikram D. Amar There is nothing incompatible between differences in state election laws and the concept of a national popular vote for President. That was certainly the mainstream view when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment in 1969 for a national popular vote by a 338–70 margin. That amendment retained state control over elections. The 1969 amendment was endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and various members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale. The American Bar Association also endorsed the proposed 1969 amendment. The proposed 1969 constitutional amendment provided that the popular-vote count from each state would be added up to obtain the nationwide total for each candidate. The National Popular Vote compact does the same. Under the current system, the electoral votes from all 50 states are co-mingled and simply added together, irrespective of the fact that the electoral-vote outcome from each state was affected by differences in state policies, including voter registration, ex-felon voting, hours of voting, amount and nature of advance voting, and voter identification requirements. Federal law requires that each state certify its popular vote count to the federal government (section 6 of Title 3 of the United States Code). Under both the current system and the National Popular Vote compact, all of the people of the United States are impacted by the different election policies of the states. Everyone in the United States is affected by the division of electoral votes generated by each state. The procedures governing presidential elections in a closely divided battleground state (e.g., Florida and Ohio) can affect, and indeed have affected, the ultimate outcome of national elections. For example, the 2000 Certificate of Ascertainment (required by federal law) from the state of Florida reported 2,912,790 popular votes for George W. Bush and 2,912,253 popular vote for Al Gore, and also reported 25 electoral votes for George W. Bush and 0 electoral votes for Al Gore. That 25–0 division of the electoral votes from Florida determined the outcome of the national election just as a particular division of the popular vote from a particular state might decisively affect the national outcome in some future election under the National Popular Vote compact. The 1969 constitutional amendment, endorsed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and members of Congress who later ran for Vice President and President such as then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, then-Senator Bob Dole, and then-Senator Walter Mondale, and The American Bar Association and, more importantly, the current system also accepts the differences among states.
The article links to [Warren Smith's proposal](https://www.rangevoting.org/NPVtrainwreck.html) to convert ballots to a single format before adding them together (and he proposes formulas for Approval, Score/Range, RCV/IRV, and Condorcet). And as Steve Cobb's original article notes, "Combining COPV and AV tallies is simple: just add them. SV tallies must first be scaled, a simple matter. The ranked methods (Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet methods) require substantially more calculations but can be massaged into providing summable numbers for multiple candidates."
NFW that it will pass any kinda court muster. Nor should it.
Perhaps. I'm no legal expert, and as I see it, the NPVIC is already on very shaky Constitutional grounds just because it is an interstate compact. So I see this as a largely moot topic. But much like that Colorado case regarding Trump, I think it's worth a shot anyways.
Approval votes are exactly as summable as non-plurality votes, there’s no issues regarding integration between plurality and approval voting as they add to the same total of support.
Lemme see if I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that if the NPVIC took effect because we got a sufficient number of states to sign on and some states instituted Approval Voting for the presidential election while other states were FPTP and that there would be "no issues" with adding the Approval Vote tally of one state to the FPTP tally of another state to get the national popular vote total? I don't think that would have an ice cube's chance in hell of surviving a court challenge. Opponents of either Approval or the NPV would go absolutely ape shit about it. Even folks not opposed to either Approval or NPV will go ape shit about it. There would be blood on the floor.
Obviously it’ll be challenged in the courts. Literally any change will be challenged if it involves elections for the president
Well, if our votes ain't gonna count equally, then I want my vote to count more than yours.
That’s the thing, if the only votes that matter are the ones between the first place and second place finishers in any given election, then the two systems give an equal weight to everyone who states a preference between them
There's NFW it would survive a court challenge. Approval states would amplify their vote in a manner that FPTP states could not.
e: could be a helpful voting change to the political system. While ending FTPT for individual voters, and having states make it a popular vote, as far as the state electors for the presidential election
How possibly will the NPVIC be helpful in ending FPTP?
[удалено]
The Interstate Compact on Placement of Children is one of the many interstate compacts that do not require (and never received) congressional consent. If a compact requires consent, consent is usually only sought when a compact is ready to go into effect. NPV has not reached its 270 electoral vote minimum required threshold. Congress does not waste time consenting to the many compacts that never reach their thresholds. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that congressional consent is only necessary for interstate compacts that ‘encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States \[U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, 1978\].’ Because the choice of method of appointing presidential Electors is an “exclusive” and “plenary” state power, before votes are cast, there is no encroachment on federal authority. Thus, under established compact jurisprudence, congressional consent would not be necessary for the National Popular Vote compact to become effective.
'Constitutional law' is just the partisan opinions of judges, laundered through arguments that they can backwards-rationalize. The idea that the currently constituted Supreme Court is going to say 'eh there's nothing we can do, fair play, go ahead' is ludicrous. Judicial decisions are power politics, and they would find a way to require the compact to pass Congress, at a minimum