Maine Becomes First State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting in a Presidential Election

Re:Maine Becomes First State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting in ... by jcranmer on Friday October 30, 2020 @03:27PM (#24945936)

The question of course is what constitutes an "Agreement or Compact" under constitutional terms. SCOTUS held in Virginia v Tennessee that an agreement is something that increases the power of a state in some fashion. The popular vote compact here may not meet that threshold.

For comparison, note that a lot of what we think of as "treaties" (which require advice and consent of the Senate) aren't actually treaties per the constitutional interpretation, but done only with executive privilege.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Maine Becomes First State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting in ... by woofie11 on Friday October 30, 2020 @04:28PM (#24946568)

More fundamentally, NPVIC doesn't actually require an agreement or compact.

States just need to pass a law which says: "If greater than [threshold] of states pass NPVIC-compliant laws, we will select electors based on popular vote of America, rather than on popular vote of [state]."

This type of collusion very obviously doesn't meet the threshold under Constitutional terms, and continues to be a republican form of government. I don't see any issues.

This sort of collusion is pretty common too. See local COVID19 response state consortia, codes like UCC, professional accreditations, etc. Without that, the US government would be impotent, since there are things which are outside of federal power, but which require coordination across states. If this were banned, the US would collapse.

[ Parent | on HN ]