Democrats can not break the constituency alone

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In another popular voting universe, you would have had President Al Gore. Or President Hillary Clinton. That is why Democrats, who are concentrated in coastal cities and states, tend to really like the idea.

The pact can only come into force as long as it is not joined by states representing 270 electoral votes, magic number for the election of a president. It is gaining ground, although so far only the states that opted for Clinton in 2016 have signed.

Maine and Nevada are the last states whose legislatures voted in favor of membership. If their Democratic governors sign, it means that 16 states plus Washington, DC, will have agreed to promise their 199 electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. It's 71 electoral votes less than the 270 they need for the pact to become active.

The proposal was passed by a chamber in a few other states, including legislatures controlled by the Republicans of Oklahoma and Arizona.

This is a key point. The idea that the candidate who gets the most votes wins the victory is not so crazy in a country that considers itself a democracy, but to achieve this, it will be necessary for the states that voted for the President Donald Trump in 2016 engage.

And this will involve convincing Republicans, who control nearly two-thirds of state legislatures and a smaller majority of governments, to abandon the institutional advantage that has given them many recent presidents who have achieved less voice than others.

What does the Constitution say?

The Constitution requires voters to choose the president, but it does not say much about how voters are chosen.

In the early history of the United States, many state legislators did the job, mainly by excluding individual voters from the process. The system of states grouping their electoral votes into win-win-all sets has evolved over time, but it has become the norm since the 1800s.

Some states still have their own rules. Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes proportionately, which means that more than one candidate can emerge from an election with electoral votes. This is how Trump got an electoral vote from Maine in 2016 and that Barack Obama got one from Nebraska, otherwise red, in 2008.

Nothing in the Constitution or federal law requires voters to vote for candidates chosen by voters in their country. It is a system of honor. In 2016, seven so-called "unfaithful" voters went their own way, breaking with the results achieved by the state.

But changing the Constitution is a difficult process that requires several steps and support from the absolute majority.

This is why the interstate pact appears to its supporters as an elegant and much simpler solution. The electoral college met anyway and chose the president in this system. Thus, just as the state-based winners system was born in the nineteenth century, perhaps a pact to select the winner of the popular vote is only the next step of the game. 39, an evolutionary process.

But it is also what allows the opponents to affirm the opposite: it is a way for the democrats to undermine the system – in their favor.

The problem of competing majorities

It is a fact of US policy that demographic trends favor the Democrats, who run cities and agglomerations, while the Electoral College favors Republicans.

As pollster Gary Langer once said, growth in urban areas will not necessarily help Democrats defeat Trump by 2020. It simply means more disappointed people, grouped together.

"It is clear that the over-voting of Democrats in urban areas leaves them more vulnerable outside major cities than their full support suggests," Langer wrote in a recent article.

Democrats were frustrated by the electoral college at least since 2000. In recent electoral cycles, countermeasures such as the "Grand Schlep" of 2008 have come into being – a political coup to obtain transplants of the blue state in order to ensure to evangelize their parents or grandparents in Florida and in other beating states on behalf of Obama.

Warren supports the project to eliminate the electoral college

Several Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 have already called for the abolition of the electoral college, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

"My point of view is that every vote counts, and the way we can do it is that we can have a national vote, which means we get rid of the constituency – and every vote counts," she said. early in a CNN City Hall this year.

The interstate compact does not go so far as to abolish the electoral college, but it would effectively neutralize its power.

Arguments against the compact

There is a notable opposition to this idea. Former Maine Republican governor Paul LePage said this year that, under the covenant, "whites will have nothing to say".

"What would happen if they did what they said they would do, the whites would have nothing to say," said LePage on WVOM radio. "It will only be the minorities who would elect, it would be California, Texas, Florida."

This race-based opposition is ugly and unhappy, and the successor to the LePage Democratic Party is about to add Maine to the pact.

But Trump said on Twitter that the abolition of the Electoral College would change the way the US elections are organized.

"Campaigning for the popular vote is much easier and different than campaigning for the constituency.It's like training for the 100-meter race against a marathon." Electoral college is that you have to go to many states to win. Popular vote, you go … ", he tweeted in March," … only the big states – the cities would end by leading the country.The small states and the entire Midwest would eventually lose all power – and we could not let that happen.I liked the idea of the popular vote, but now realize that the electoral college is much better for the United States "

It is quite natural for a president who loses the popular vote to have this view. Proponents of the pact claim that, under the current system, candidates only focus on a few win-win states, with the result that the presidential election is only really fighting in a handful of places like Florida, the Rust Belt, North Carolina and Arizona.

But if the pact were adopted, you can imagine that the Supreme Court should intervene. That would be half of the states that would unite to change the political process for all. There is no prohibition of interstate pacts, but the Congress may have to intervene.

Others have pointed out that a nationwide recount in the event of an extremely tight election would be extremely difficult and costly. The 2000 Florida recount was a national event. Imagine that nationwide.

There were extremely close elections. In 1880, James Garfield won the popular vote by less than 2,000 votes. Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy by about 112,000. Situations like this could put the pact to the test, as well as a multiple-candidate election in which the person who got the vote the most popular would still have less than 50%. However, several American presidents, including Bill Clinton, were elected this way.

It is ultimately a university conversation, unless and until Republicans agree to give up their current advantage to the constituency and accept the idea of raising the popular vote.

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