"That's 98 electoral votes away from making the electoral college effectively irrelevant."

More than likely, the compact would dissolve the first time it was tested.

If the compact was in place, and the national popular vote and the traditional electoral college result were again in conflict, it would necessarily mean that at least one state in the compact would be compelled to cast their electoral votes against their state voters.

So let's say in 2024, the Democratic candidate would have won the traditional electoral college count, but narrowly loses the popular vote. And this is definitely something everyone in the media would be discussing. If a state like California is in the compact, I have a hard time believing they would stand back and cast all of the state's electoral votes for the Republican, even as the Democratic candidate got nearly 60% of their vote. More than likely, if CA could renege on the pact and allow the Democrat to become president, they would. Without wide-wide adoption, the exit of a state like CA would likely deprive the compact of it's electoral majority. This sort of conflict is inevitable in such an unstable and unenforceable compact, real change on the electoral college requires an amendment.

The states in the compact would have no legal means to back out after looking at the election results.

They could then change back the law for the *next* election, though.

after the election. There is more than a month from election day to when the Electoral College votes. Florida Republicans contemplated changing the way electors were chosen in the 2000 mess, as I recall.

I’m pretty sure “bad things have happened and will continue to happen” with the current system. So we would be trading an already bad system for a fair chance at direct popular election of our president.

If you want to abolish the Electoral College, the only real way to do it is to pass a constitutional amendment.

Meanwhile, this approach, with its weaknesses, actually can happen.

As opposed to Mars...

But I agree with the others...Especially if all that was needed to put a Republican in the White House came down to a few GOP controlled states calling for an emergency sessions in their state assembly & change every single law they need to change, PERIOD!!

Seriously, the GOP has already proven over & over again that there is NOTHING THEY WON’T DO

It is not likely for that to happen anytime soon.

that they have attempted to make go away.

A state legislature has the Constitutional power to change how their electors are chosen at any time.

This pact would likely have the issue you describe.

affect this. It would need a Constitutional Amendment.

https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A2Sec1.html

U.S. Constitution - Article 2 Section 1
Article 2 - The Executive Branch
Section 1 - The President

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
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There is no getting around this without an Amendment to the Constitution. Any law passed by a state is zero impediment.

But I'm betting that if Clinton had won the presidency with the electoral vote but lost the popular vote we would be hearing very few complaints from the Left about it.

About how the Deep State stole the election from them.

Which is exactly what the Left is doing now.
We all knew the rules. Kind of like how the World Series is won by the first team to win 4 games and not the team that scores the most runs. The presidency is won by the candidate who wins at least 270 electoral votes and not by who wins the most popular votes. But again...we all knew that.

In 2004, had Kerry won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote, beating Bush who had done the same thing to Gore in 2001, the Electoral College would likely be gone now since both parties would have been stung by it. But since it benefited the GOP both times they have no reason to want to change it.
I think that if the Democrats had won both of those elections the same way they wouldn't have any interest in changing how we elect presidents either.

don't they?

There are many problems with this current system.

breaking up states according to population and giving them more senators. This was one of the ideas that was interesting in the article.
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17258866/democratic-party-republicans-trump-election

I saw a post about having to play dirty, but I didn't read it. I was missing something!

Can you imagine if CA divided into several states? There would never be another GOP congress. All we would have to do is get the several CA states passed and then never allow it for red states. Brilliant!

No bueno.

The money guys have been very busy for a long time figuring in who they can get to compromise in their plan to emasculate California's one-party rule

been proposed too (urban vs. rural). I'm sure every state has had such arguments and this simply brings up the urban vs. rural argument...rural America for some reason is afraid of urban America. Despite the fact that urban America buys a big part of their goods and services, rural America is afraid to go into our cities, and actually visit. This of course isn't 100% true for all of us, I think that there is a unrealistic fear of the urban crime and so forth, for it's advertised on the news, the newspaper, etc., whereas, you don't probably hear as much going on in Farmstead, USA. Funny thing, I would hear more gunshots down in the rural area vs. the urban area I've lived in.

I've seen this in my own family when they come to visit. Instead of them coming to my house to visit, they will stay in a hotel 30 miles away (outside city limits), and then only let me drive since they trust my driving in the city vs. theirs. But when I go to visit them, they expect the total opposite from me, stay at their place, etc. I finally several years ago got tired of this lopsided exchange and now don't even go to see my family (I'd go see them 10-15 times a year, them, once every 10 years). Very one sided, and am tired of it.

First of all, people need to realize the sheer differences in population between urban and rural...in my metro area, there's approximately 3.5 million in the urban area. Outlying areas, probably 100,000-200,000 people. Businesses tend to go where the customer is, so factories will locate in the cities, businesses if they can afford it, will locate in the cities (available labor), etc. It's just that the sheer economics / mechanics of locating in the rural environment does have costs associated w/ it vs. the costs that an urban environment will have.

A large chunk of the small rural manufacturers have disappeared or relocated to probably cheaper labor markets or went out of business (China, India, etc. imports have flooded the American market via Walmart, JC Penney, Sears, etc.).

The simple fact in remodeling/tailoring the electoral vote/popular vote is that the two main parties drive home this dividing line and use it to drive our politics, when in fact, our interests are far more common than they would have you believe...

If none of the red states sign on - that seems to be a problem.

It would only work to help a Republican who had otherwise lost the electoral college but won the popular vote, but would never help a Democrat in the same situation.

This bill never gets out of committee

But look at what you could say are the other two superpowers - Russia and China. I'm not exactly enamoured of the way their governments work, either.

If we kept the EC, but went to the popular vote compact in all 50 states, every president could claim they won all 50 states and were unanimously elected

It won't make any difference in a normal election.

However, where it could really be important, is if we ever have an election where at least three candidates get electoral votes, and none of them get to 270. As things stand now, the House would then get to select the winner from among the top 3 candidates. This compact would take that decision out of their hands, and give the election to the candidate that received the most popular votes.

...is the day this concept will collapse.

And benefit Republicans if a third party from the left peeled away 5%+. Imagine a Republican getting 44% of the popular vote while the Democrat gets 42%, and the third parties get the other 12%. Likely in the next couple years? Probably not, but it's not impossible.