Two new polls released this month have found significant public support for ending America's status as the world's only democracy that uses an electoral college to elect its president. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center publicized a survey that finds a 65-33 majority in favor of ditching the Electoral College and instead electing the candidate who wins the most votes, while the Democratic firm Civiqs unveiled a new tracking poll whose numbers as of Thursday find a 51-42 majority in support of the idea.
While outright abolishing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which Republicans would almost certainly block, momentum has recently been building for a workaround plan to institute a national popular vote without needing an amendment. Known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, this plan requires member states to adopt legislation to collectively award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, but these laws would come into force only after states with a majority of electoral votes have joined the compact.
The 17 current members (16 states and Washington, D.C.) have 205 of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate the compact. Depending on the results of elections over the next few years, the compact could reach a majority of electoral votes as soon as 2028 since there's a tough-yet-real path to approving the compact, as illustrated in the map at the top of this story (click here to enlarge) and in this companion spreadsheet.
Several states run by Democrats have joined the compact since 2016, when Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite Hillary Clinton winning more votes nationwide. This year alone, Minnesota joined the pact, Nevada passed the first part of a multiyear plan to join, and Michigan could join the alliance in the coming months. In Nevada, this push would eventually require voters to approve a constitutional amendment in 2026, while Michigan Republicans could try to use a veto referendum if Democrats enact it there, which is why polls finding broad support are so important to its success.
In fact, the one and only time a state has directly voted on whether to participate in the compact came in Colorado in 2020, when Republican opponents used a ballot referendum to try to veto a law that Democrats had passed the previous year. While Coloradans ultimately voted 52-48 to reject the GOP's veto attempt and remain in the compact, that result was much narrower than Joe Biden's 55-42 victory in the state during that same election.
However, it's possible that Trump's attempt to overturn his loss following that election, which underscored some of the very real flaws of the Electoral College, could persuade a larger proportion of voters who support the national popular vote in the abstract to actually vote for it if it appears on their state's ballot. Getting enough states to join the compact so that it has the majority of electoral votes needed to activate could depend on it.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
