Illegal voting is already illegal, and states can already in theory do shady things in their elections (and some probably already do). The courts should absolutely go after this, and I don't see NPV really changing this.
> The NPV system focus the most energy on states with a high population in this condition.
Perhaps so, but the one of the main points of NPV is for state boundaries to be meaningless for campaigning. Maybe politicians should spend more time in densely populated areas because, well, there are more people there.
> What would happen when there are charges of skullduggery? Would states really trust, with no power to verify, other state’s returns?
Do states currently trust that other states hold fair elections to determine how their electors vote? I don't see any change here.
Currently the effects of any illegal voting are contained to the state that the illegal voting happened in; North Dakota's electors aren't going to vote differently even if there are 6 million illegal votes in California. With an NPV that isn't the case.
The current system is resistant to these concerns, so the lack of a nation-wide voter ID is less important than it would be with a national popular vote.
No, it wouldn't.
California and New York, even voting as a 100% block, don't represent a national majority. Heck, they aren't even the two largest states (#2 is Texas.)
It wouldn't be states representing a relatively small fraction of the population dictating control of the Senate while be overly powerful in choosing the President—but they'd still control the Senate, and hereby have a veto on federal law. So why would they secede?
> You would definitely see a mass succession.
(1) you mean secession, and
(2) if the low-population, mostly low-GDP states secede and thereby sacrifice their disproportionate control over be rest of the country, that they otherwise retain as long as the Senate exists with or without also having extra Presidential vote weighting (the small, high-GDP states have largely signed on to the national popular vote, so aren't likely to secede over it), whose loss is that?
It seems unlikely to me, but perhaps some states would try to secede if the system changed such that their voters receives the same influence as every other voter in the country. I would not support that decision.
The Electoral College is apportioned by population already (with a slight bias). If California and New York had a mojority of the voters, they would already have a majority of EC votes.
California and New York also aren't monolithic. Remember: the electoral college is a lie. People in states don't actually all have the same opinions. Californians supported Trump by 40%.
Every actual study of the matter I've seen or heard of has shown no evidence of any significant fraudulent voting, particularly not systemic fraudulent voting. While there might be a theoretical concern about incentives here, there's a lot of problems we know are happening right now with voter suppression under the system that we have.
Machine politics and the nonsense behind it is a form of vote fraud. While southern states have a long history of denying African Americans the ability to vote, states where county politics controls voting like New York are also problematic.
More directly, there are plenty of schemes to fraudulently get votes counted, from absentee ballot fraud in nursing homes to voting irregularities in religious communities.
California recently had to be forced by lawsuit to remove 5 million invalid voter registrations. Multiple counties have more registered voters than they have age 18+ citizens. It is unclear how often these registrations were actually used to vote, but isn't it possible that ballots could be printed and filled surreptitiously for these registrations in the future?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_...
Oregon (where I live) is blessed with vote-by-mail -- it affords high turnout with high vote verifiability. Being able to consider & research arguments on both sides of the issues and candidates in detail before voting is fantastic.
Even if you could verify that a given vote is counted, it's much harder to verify that the voter's choice was not made under duress, or influenced by a bribe.
There are methods for mitigating these problems (like allowing an in-person vote to override your postal vote), but these have their own issues, and I worry that becoming accustomed to vote-by-mail will increase the calls for online-voting.
States have select powers over the federal government that are specifically provided by our Constitution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights. When you vote in local elections, you are in effect in control of certain outcomes within your state, as accorded by our Constitution.
The federal election determines representation for every single person in the United States and, in part, how federal governmental power is exercised on their behalf. There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any particular state should have more or less say in such matters than those in any other. The electoral college system is an absolute sham that deprives a significant number of people of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to fair representation at the federal level.
I’d welcome any well-formed argument to the contrary. I’ve yet to ever hear one.
On that same note the 500 person community will have different needs compared to other 500 person communities in the same riding. In a big city the issues will be very similiar citywide.
Yet the constitution defines the presidential election as being done by the representatives of the state's electoral college: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors."
The NPV interstate pact may not even itself be constitutional as it ignores the Article I, Section 10 requirement that interstate compacts receive congressional consent.
So should we abolish the senate too? Not being snarky just wondering what those who support NPV think.
How difficult is it to corrupt a man like Mitch McConnell? How robust is our system of representation when one senator holds so much power?
Without EC presidential candidates wouldn't be focused on states at all, they would be focused on large demographics of the US population, which is exactly what they should be focused on.
Well, it rewards people who vote. If more people in my state turn out to vote for the candidate that I didn't vote for, and who didn't get the majority of the states votes, I and most of the people that voted in my state are not rewarded by NPV.
OTOH, getting more Democratic votes in a Red state, or more Republican votes in a Blue state suddenly makes a difference in the national outcome; national elections no longer are about doing the minimum necessary to keep a majority in party-dominated states while focussing primarily on narrow appeal to the particular perceived interests of “swing state” voters, but about getting as much support as possible nationally.
the parliamentary systems of the UK ... have the parliament elect the Prime Minister and likewise don't elect their leaders by popular vote.
The system is otherwise just as broken as the US; meaning that outcomes are decided by a small number of "rural" people combined with gerrymandering.
http://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-th...
Look at the huge disparity towards small rural states. This is bad, but it's even worse because due to the effect of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 (https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/Th...) the number of Represenatives has been fixed at 435 for almost 100 years, and since the smallest number of electoral votes a state can have is 3, this makes the small states even more overpowered than they would be in a "fair" electoral college system.
Why should a voter in Wyoming have 3.71x as much weight (effectively) as mine does a North Carolinian?
Based on what we've seen in the midwest, what you're actually saying here is that divided government isn't good for anything.
I agree you would have to have the same standard for voter registration.
One way of improving the current system (from an outsiders pov) would be to make electors all faithless and having parties switch to One member one vote and do a way with registering.
Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an election, it is likely to happen in a state where both parties hold some power, rather than in a state controlled by one party. The Electoral college system focuses a great deal of energy on states in this condition when an election is close.
National Popular Vote (NPV) rewards states with high population - the higher the turnout, the more power for that state. Additionally, under NPV, each state would certify its own "national" vote total. What would happen when there are charges of skullduggery? Would states really trust, with no power to verify, other state’s returns?
I have other concerns as well but feel the EC system is superior. Just as an observation, the parliamentary systems of the UK, Canada, Israel, (& others) have the parliament elect the Prime Minister and likewise don't elect their leaders by popular vote.
[edited: removing poor wording about 'lax laws', seems I implied things in a FUD way that I didn't mean to]