Members of Oregon's majority-Democratic legislature have introduced a bill that would ask voters whether the state should join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The compact would assign Oregon's Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, but only if enough other states representing a majority of electoral votes have also signed onto the agreement.

After both Donald Trump and George W. Bush won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, this movement to reform this undemocratic institution has unfortunately run into widespread Republican opposition. However, Oregon is one of three states where Democrats have unified control over state government but that still hasn't yet joined the compact. (The others are Connecticut and Delaware.) Democratic state Sen. Peter Courtney had blocked past efforts, but he recently said he'd vote in favor of a proposal like this latest one because it gives the voters themselves a chance to weigh in.

So far, states with only 165 of the necessary 270 electoral votes have joined the compact, and Oregon would only add seven more to the tally. However, this is one of the best opportunities reformers have for getting closer to the needed majority in the Electoral College.

New York Times: “Mrs. Trump and the president have had a tumultuous relationship at times over the years, but few episodes have roiled the peace as much as the news surrounding Ms. Daniels. The reports of a payoff blindsided the first lady, who was furious with her husband, according to two people close to the couple. She has kept a low profile since.”

“On Tuesday, Mrs. Trump is expected to resurface. The White House said that she would attend Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address, typically the most high-profile appearance of the year for first ladies.”

Texas’ second attempt to require health providers to bury or cremate fetal remains has been temporarily thwarted by a federal judge and another court battle is imminent.

In his Monday afternoon ruling, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra said the Texas Department of State Health Services’ arguments “lack merit.”

“For those eager for a result in this case, it is tempting to read the Court's decision as a signal on who will win at trial or as a determination of the validity of Plaintiffs' claims,” Ezra said. “Such guesswork would be premature. The Court only concludes Plaintiffs establish injunctive relief is warranted to preserve the status quo.”

The current fight is over Senate Bill 8, a law passed during the 2017 legislative session that has a provision forcing health care facilities to bury or cremate any fetal remains from abortions, miscarriage or treatment for ectopic pregnancy, regardless of their patients’ personal wishes or beliefs. That provision was supposed to go into effect Feb. 1.

The challenge in trying to evaluate the impact of vote at home on turnout is that there’s never a control group. Turnout rates in the states where everyone can vote at home — Oregon, Washington and Colorado — have increased since the system was adopted, and they’re now among the highest in the country. But because elections are complicated, and each state’s demographics are unique, it’s hard to prove that vote at home is the cause.

So Pantheon Analytics did the next best thing. The firm looked at voter files — the records of individual voters kept by state elections officials — in Colorado in 2014 and compared them with the predictions of a respected voter turnout model created by the Democratic-leaning consulting firm Clarity Campaign Labs. Turnout models use publicly available voter file information — age, sex, voting history — combined with consumer data to generate a probability score for each registered voter.

?uuid=4bxXTgLAEeidMdcs942-7g

....Vote at home clearly seems to have pushed young people and infrequent voters into the electorate — exactly what our ailing system needs. Democrats should be fighting tooth and nail to get it implemented wherever possible. But the partisanship results are hazy enough that Republicans shouldn’t be too scared: It looks like these low-frequency voters tend to be less partisan and therefore more up for grabs.

Besides, boosting turnout in lower-profile elections would be good for the long-term health of both parties. Low turnout may help Republican candidates prevail in general elections, but it also empowers the right-wing fringe, leading to a party that, once in power, is incapable of governing — as the GOP’s inability to prevent a shutdown, despite unified control of the federal government, recently illustrated.