Can Democrats effectively abolish Electoral College after midterm wins? | Hacker News Reader

Can Democrats effectively abolish Electoral College after midterm wins?

snopes.com

24 pointsskadamat38 comments

The real answer here is nobody knows, and it will likely be up to SCOTUS. Everyone saying it needs a constitutional amendment doesn't understand what NPVIC is. The whole point of it is to do an end-run around the constitutional amendment process - a hack if you will.

Whether this hack is legal is a complicated question (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionality_of_the_Natio...) that realistically can't be answered by anyone but SCOTUS. If states pull the trigger on NPVIC then I would bet good money that it ends up in SCOTUS, but who knows how they will rule.

And if the sentiment toward such sleight of hand is as negative as the sentiment toward Trump last Tuesday, then the pendulum could swing as swiftly to the right as it did to the left.

This was pretty clearly a backlash against the high gas and groceries prices. Oh and data centers. The average voter doesn't care about things they think are too complicated.

So what?

Did the right ever consider the pendulum effect when they invented "plenary authority?" Or on Jan. 6th?

You could end up in a situation where your state voted for one candidate but all of its electoral votes went to another. For example CA voted for... honestly I can't remember her name - she took over after Biden dropped out - but trump won the popular vote so you, as a Californian, your vote would go to trump.

Yeah that’s the idea - the one with the more votes gets the job

My guess is that they will raise the "just kidding" card.

Abolishing the Electoral College would be interesting. Politicians would pay less attention to more rural states, probably less subsidies for farmers (which would end up being bad for food prices). But also less silly ideas like Ethanol. Trump won the popular vote in 2024, its not so cut and dry about it just being an absolute blue team win. It would cause more republicans in blue states to vote in presidential campaigns, and more democrats in red states to vote. I know many people in NYS that just never bother to vote since their vote doesn't matter anyway.

It's the makeup of the senate that ensures that farmers and rural folk are highly over-represented in Congress.

In presidential elections, the design of the electoral college works the other way around. It ensures that large swing states like Florida in the past and Texas today are over-represented. It means that getting 51% of the vote in Texas gets you all 40 votes.

I can’t see the Snopes piece, but from what I understand, the push is not to abolish the electoral college, but to get the newly Democrat-controlled states to ratify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which participating states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, once the compact’s member states total 270 or more electoral votes. So, preventing future occurrences like 2016 where Trump won the EC but lost the popular vote.

Kennedy probably also won the 1960 election due to electoral college shenanigans. Unlike the Senate which is clearly biased towards whichever party can win the small states, the bias the electoral college gives can benefit either party.

Yes, to me this seems similar to recent Republican gerrymandering efforts that immediately backfired. It’s not a good idea to fiddle with the machinery of elections for partisan gain; it’s likely to have unexpected consequences.

It's always a good idea to remove fiddling whether it benefits your party or not. It's better to win fair without any question of undue gain. The electoral college is one source of fiddling. Gerrymandering and Citizens United are larger sources of fiddling; all 3 should be removed.

Maybe a more interesting question is do they have the strength and/or guts to jettison the supermajority rule, impeach the top two executive branch officials in one go, and appoint the Speaker of the House to the top slot? There is no constitutional or legal reason why they couldn't do both at once in one resolution and no really constraining definitions of the necessary "charges". It's all convention and tradition, which we've seen at this point is basically fictional rules for the meek and incoherent.

You're mixing up two things.

There are potential paths to jettison the Senate filibuster rules. I hope they have the guts to do that.

OTOH, the 2/3rds needed to impeach is part of the constitution. Same with the 2/3rds needed to override a presidential veto.

Nope. That is not going to happen because it will require a constitutional amendment which does not benefit supremely rural states. Even if these extremely conservative rural states completely flipped to hard blue they would still be rural.

The Electoral College is not a bad idea. It is just implemented poorly. It would work better if it actually represented the voting constituents instead of a controlling party. Nebraska and Maine have it correct.

The Electoral College is a bad idea whose primary purpose was to keep slave-owning states in the union. It's absurd that we still keep it around.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50379853

I’d be deeply disappointed and highly motivated to act against such a thing. Same feelings about changes to the Supreme Court.

America has a well balanced system, as demonstrated by this weeks blue wave. If the party in power fails to adequately deliver, the people throw them out. Changing the formula to give a strategic advantage to one side would be a dangerous move.

America does not have well balanced system. It has deeply flawed and dysfunctional system that failed. Democrats winning does not prove the system to be functional or good.

And supreme court is thoroughly politicized. It needs reform, because it is one of reasons for the dysfunction, for the lack of accountability and for the creation of imperial presidency.

Just getting to this reality as you traverse the multiverse? Because we don’t have a well balanced system, we have a system that is being stress-tested with hopes it fails — and we’re lucky it didn’t fail!

Anyway you should acquaint yourself with this reality. Because it is seemingly nothing like what you have described.

Even if it is more representative?

The purpose of democracy is not to balance between arbitrary parties.

The US has a representative government. We don’t have citizens directly vote on bills that go before the president.

Likewise, we don’t use a simple vote tally or other schemes like vote proportional to taxes paid. We use the carefully designed electoral college to make sure states are fairly represented.

Framing this as a change "to give a strategic advantage to one side" is disingenuous. The current formula gives a strategic advantage to one side. In our lifetimes, there have only been 2 US presidential elections where the electoral college winner lost the popular vote, and both were Republicans. No other democracy in the world still uses an indirect "electoral college" system for electing the head of its executive branch.

The electoral college was chosen because it puts less densely populated states on more equal footing. It was an intentional choice over a straight popular vote tally.

The popular vote tally was intentionally disregarded. The founders wisely understood the problems a straight vote tally would bring, and avoided them.

Changing the formula would seriously put things at risk.

You're misstating history here. For electing the president, the framers didn't mandate a popular vote at all, even at a state level -- but nor did they forbid one.

Instead, they left it up to the individual states to decide how to select electors, and initially most of them opted to have the state legislature choose the electors, not a popular vote of the state's citizens. It took decades for all states to converge on having a state-wide popular vote decide electors, and even today, "faithless" (rogue) electors -- who vote against the popular will -- are not punished in a number of states!

Given that the Constitution explicitly gives power to the individual states to decide how to select electors, there's nothing inherently "changing the formula" in a state deciding to select electors based on the entire country's popular vote tally, instead of just the state's vote tally.

Rather, the main argument against this is whether it violates the Compact Clause in article 1 by virtue of being a compact between states.

That would result in civil war

I bet it wouldn’t.

I'm certain of it. But it doesn't matter: the Supreme Court would never allow a dissolution of the Republic in favor of a traditional Democracy.

how many divisions does the supreme court have?

Umm, none? Are you asking how often they are divided in their decisions? As often as the matters are ideology-driven: conservative vs liberal.

And if Democrats try to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices, then again: civil war.

Civil war is a popular threat! What drives your certainty? What do you think is the marginal number of additional justices to trigger war?

In my limited experience, civil war became a popular threat since the 2016 elections, particularly the 2020 elections. There were plenty of indicators of unusual unrest and support from national leaders to fight if necessary, from both parties.

The constitution and founding fathers called for the exercise of the second amendment whenever the government went rogue, like trying to change the constitution, such as the electoral college, which ensures representation of minority populations, like farmers and other hands-on workers.

https://wordhistories.net/2019/08/23/how-many-divisions-pope...

Oh... so what exactly are you trying to say? Word what you're trying to get at plainly.

He’s saying that even if the Supreme Court rules against it, a legislative coup (ignoring their decision) could prevent them from enforcing it.

Ok so if we expand the court to have the number of justices match the number of districts… you’re claiming that would start a civil war? With who fighting exactly? And over what? And where?

Who would raise an army to try and stop this? Who would be a willing foot soldier (besides you)?

Please, back up your bluster with something sane, something real, not just your personal nonsense. Otherwise? STFU.

The Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, which actually changed multiple times throughout the 1800s.

Why do you specifically call out Democrats here? The most recent court size increase was during the presidency of Grant, a Republican.

Anyway, regarding the original topic of the National Popular Vote compact, the Constitution does not specify how each state chooses its electors in the Electoral Collage. Initially, most state legislatures chose their electors without any popular vote at all!

Eventually all states switched to a popular vote system, individually, but this took several decades to occur. That initial switch seems more substantial than what is proposed in the National Popular Vote compact, so why are you confidently proclaiming that it would result in a civil war?

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