Personally I say abolish the electoral colleges to ensure that every vote actually matters. That alone will reduce voter apathy and get more people actually out there voting.
No need for amendments when you have clever legal hackery!
In particular, it'll be really interesting to see what happens if/when we get to the point where any state joining the NPVIC would push it over the edge. Would that state waver knowing that they're going to be the ones to press the big red button?
You also have the judiciary to worry about. It's not obvious that the NPVIC is constitutional, and I highly doubt that the current Supreme Court, packed as it is with activist right-wing judges, would let it happen.
Interstate compacts without the blessing of the federal government are unconstitutional. This is because the federal government has sovereign power over interstate relations, and a bloc of states that coordinate action are effectively challenging that sovereign power. So if the NPVIC is passed, it would also need to be approved by federal legislation to be deemed constitutional.
I think the founding fathers would cite our current president as the reason they didn't trust direct democracy...
It's food for thought whenever I think about pushing more towards direct democracy. I've been leaning towards proportional electoral votes, but there are so many unintended consequences.
This is exceedingly unlikely. At least not without major platform changes. A trump that appeals to an additional 3-5 million people looks significantly different.
> I think the founding fathers would cite our current president as the reason they didn't trust direct democracy
This makes even less sense, a more direct democracy (proportional approtianmemt in the house and senate) would be a much stronger check on an unpopular president. What you're seeing now is what happens when the value of votes are distributed unevenly, such that a party can appeal to a minority while retaining political power.
That said even if it were the case, a popular vote would have other useful far reaching consequences in terms of how federal funding is apportioned.
But the college is there historically because the founders didn't trust direct democracy...
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-elector...
How could you possibly divine the intent of the 2016 Trump campaign? We still can't agree on a vast number of its actions, let alone its strategy.
1) didn't try to win the popular vote i.e. specifically did not court the votes of certain people
2) In order to run as a populist i.e. shore up votes from his base
3) because the Electoral College system supports just such a strategy, such that winning 51% of a few states while only getting 45% of the vote
Well, other than his entire campaign, the clearest evidence I can give is this in the face of actual polling numbers indicating that #1 and #2 had come to pass in the summer of 2016, the campaign's advertising dollars focused almost exclusively on the Obama states he ended up flipping.
But you're right -- he might never have actually gotten a popular vote.