Proof of Concept
It is time now to do away with the Electoral College and institute the national popular vote. It is time to provide true incentives for the political parties to win the true majority of voters and address the issues that matter most to the American people. There have been several proposed paths toward a national popular vote, one of which is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Under the NPVIC, the states signed onto the Compact would pledge to apportion their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, even if that candidate did not win a majority of votes in their particular state. This agreement would not go into effect until the states signed on represent at least 270 + 1 Electoral votes (the threshold for victory in the Electoral College). Current signatories to the NPVIC are Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon, and Minnesota, in total representing 205 Electoral votes, per the 2020 U.S. Census. By focusing on the NPVIC, the campaign for the national popular vote need only focus on as many states as required to reach 270 + 1 Electoral votes, rather than attempting to achieve the 2/3 consent in both Houses of Congress and then 3/4 consent of the State legislatures necessary for a constitutional amendment.
By concerted mobilizing efforts at the local and state levels, such as letter campaigns to representatives, the NPVIC may very well come first, but an amendment to the Constitution should be the ultimate goal. The League of Women Voters supports “the use of the National Popular Vote Compact as one acceptable way to achieve the goal of the direct popular vote for election of the president until the abolition of the Electoral College is accomplished.” It is only by a Constitutional amendment that this can happen. Only an amendment would reaffirm to the world and to the American public our commitment to democracy. Only an amendment would stabilize and legitimize American government at home and abroad. Only an amendment would protect the right to a popular vote for future generations.
At the heart of republican democracy is the individual. Alexander Hamilton, our complicated statesman, declared at the Constitutional Convention that:
“States are a collection of individual men. Which ought we respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition. Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter.”
The question has been posed: in America’s democracy, what matters most, the states or the people? Under the Electoral College, we have a strange version of democracy, in which it is the states, the land, that are granted electoral authority rather than the people.
I acknowledge that the solution to this problem, an amendment to the Constitution, is a daunting task. In this age of divided government, deep polarization, and gridlock, an amendment may seem impossible. But I encourage us to look to the past. It was at times impossible to imagine the success of women’s suffrage, civil rights, or gay liberation. Yet, in turn, the 19th Amendment was ratified. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments reinvented America and laid the foundation for the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges legalized gay marriage. In history, there are moments of transformative political productivity: Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and the Civil Rights Era. Now, the American political environment is saturated by mass gerrymandering, deep frustration with the American government, a second Gilded Age, and profound polarization. We may well be on the precipice of great change. Do not let that noise impede your imagination.
–Alex Li
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