The End of the Electoral College Is Finally in Sight | Opinion

Newsweak ^ | Apr 19, 2024 | David Faris Associate Professor, Roosevelt University

[Baladas]

Earlier this week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) decided not to veto an obscure law called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), which calls for the state's 4 Electoral College votes to be awarded to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationally regardless of the outcome in the state. The law doesn't go into effect, however, until states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact. That's the number of Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. Once dismissed as an unworkable, almost farcical fantasy, the NPV just tallied its 209th electoral vote with Maine, and now has a clear path to victory. And that means that the Electoral College as we know it might not survive past the 2024 election cycle.

This is incredible news. The U.S. Electoral College is, by a quite considerable margin, the most unfathomably stupid democratic institution in the world. It has already malfunctioned twice this century by awarding the presidency to the person who received fewer votes from the American electorate. The 2000 election of George W. Bush, who steered us directly into three distinct catastrophes—the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession—sent our new century disastrously off course in ways we are still feeling today. The even-more egregious 2016 elevation of former President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote more decisively than Bush, resulted in the capture of the Supreme Court by reactionary conservatives for at least a generation.

[Vigilanteman]

The electoral college is “stupid” to crazy and stupid bozos who think the takers should be permanently guaranteed dominance of the makers.

[Jim W N]

MUST have a constitutional amendment to discard the Electoral College!!! PERIOD!!!