It turns out that there’s another mechanism to accomplish this: a collection of states adding up to a majority of electoral votes can agree to cast all of their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Hence the subject of the article.

I don't think it will "accomplish this", because it's too low a threshold. This mechanism doesn't add up to "getting everyone to agree". It adds up to "getting 50% + 1 of the electoral votes", which is not the same thing. It's going to leave far too many people feeling bypassed and marginalized. In today's political environment, those people might become problematic.

Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules.

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.

> Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules.

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.

What makes it a hack, but amending the Constitution isn’t? I agree it feels like one, but it is entirely above board. I’m sure the authors of the Constitution didn’t anticipate states choosing to allocate their votes this way, but they didn’t bother to specify how they could or couldn’t do it.

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.

And, under current circumstances, do you see congressional approval to be forthcoming? For myself, I rather doubt it.

[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.]

Right now, no. Next time the Democrats have control of both chambers, though, it seems possible.

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.

The Supreme Court doesn't issue advisory opinions.