Throw them all out? If so, replace them with what? Worse: How do you get everyone to agree on what to replace them with?
As it turns out, there's a mechanism for getting everyone to agree, and to prevent changes that everyone does not agree with (for certain values of "everyone"): Amend the Constitution.
At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that their vote actually matters for once. And if they don’t, well, lots more people feel bypassed and marginalized now.
If it’s a bad idea, what do you propose to do about it? The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.
That too. This "compact" approach bugs me partly because it's a hack to get around the appropriate way of doing this, which they know they can't get enough support to do.
> The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit.
That may be correct. But the Wikipedia article on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...) indicates that the constitutionality is at least in question. I'd really like to see the Supreme Court decide on the constitutionality of this approach before the first election where it would be in force.
From the Wikipedia article, the only question I see is whether the agreement requires Congress to approve it or not. There seems to be no question that the agreement is allowed and would work.
[Edit: Why isn't amending the Constitution a hack? Because it's the recognized mechanism for changing the rules.
What makes the compact a hack? I guess it feels like a hack because the expectation is that, if you're going to change the way the president gets elected, you have to change the Constitution - and therefore having to withstand the full level of scrutiny that such a change would involve. Changing it within the parameters allowed - just barely - by the Constitution is not technically a hack, legally. But it's still feels like a hack to make the change without as much scrutiny, and without the need for the massive majority. At least, so it seems to me.]
In any case, my point is just that a constitutional amendment isn’t required and this is totally above-board. The odds of an amendment being ratified are far lower.
I agree that last election was the perfect scenario for the EC to do its job. But who should it have elected instead? And, could it have actually done so without touching off a civil war? (Not a rhetorical one, not a metaphorical one - a real live shooting live rounds, dead bodies piling up, state against state and brother against brother civil war.)
There was the very real possibility that the individual states would go their own way if they didn’t like the proposed Constitution. Larger states could have easily decided that they didn’t need to be part of a larger country. Smaller states could have easily decided that they would be ruled by the larger states and that they’d be better off independent.
The electoral college was needed to convince everyone to stick together. Same with the different structures of the House and the Senate, the 3/5ths compromise, and more.
Things are completely different now. There’s no realistic possibility that any state will exit the union. The major purpose of so many elements of our federal system is completely gone.