Like a super Faithless elector.

It's going to make it easier for the AP I guess ? (unless plot twist: the States don't all keep their promises if they don't like the final result).

Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

All that being said, switching to apportioning electors according to the popular vote winner would make many more people's votes count given that we're realistically waiting on the results of 7 states to decide the upcoming election.

States are allowed to good things in service of the union.

> No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Of course, I think ranked choice voting is much much better but I don't think it's fair to make this sound like some secret nefarious conspiracy. It's also not apparently related to the article

They're not trading anything, the compact is one where all participating states agree that the only fair election is one where the candidate with the most votes should win, and so all of them have agreed that their electors will vote for the candidate who wins the most votes at the national level, regardless of what the local result is.

As it should be, for a national vote.

That's not part of the bill in the one state that I reviewed (MA), nor in the text describing the compact generally.

[Voters in] States participating may in fact believe that multiple types of fair elections exist, but that they merely prefer this particular one.

I shown this article because it is interesting from a "technical" perspective to see how the States are discussing together to figure out a backdoor, instead of doing what is the "right" thing: sitting on a table and amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College.

It reminds me of technical debt. Instead of rewriting the original buggy code, we add one more feature and we certainly don't change anything to the original code.

So instead we have:

"This is the logic, we do this A and this B, but oh well, anyway it's C"

Simpler is better, especially on crucial things such as elections.

Changing the presidental vote to a popular vote would be the first step to doing that.

Then I learned more about how the US works, and realized that the electoral college is actually its strength! Without it cities would completely dominate rural areas, like completely.

Those rural areas would essentially have zero voice. Think about it: do you want a US where only a couple states control the entire thing?

And I don't mean like today where some states are predictably red or blue (i.e. where only the swing states "count") - in the current state red vs blue alternate positions on capital hill, so all those states eventually get their voice heard.

In a world without the Electoral College the rural states get zero voice. None.

I don't think the US would survive this.

Also, all the rural red counties in CA effectively have no voice in the presidential election. It's a dumb, outdated, arbitrary system.

Obviously rural states would not cease to have a voice in government if the President were elected by popular vote - which is in essence what the Electoral College is designed to prevent - because most Presidents have been and yet rural states somehow persist, pass legislation and maintain political power.

You mean like the US we have, where the entire race is focused on 7 states?

This is what happens when they stop teaching civics in high school. People never learn how the government works, and then when they learn one uncommon nugget of information, the only way to fit it into their worldview is to turn it into some crazy conspiracy theory.

It's pretty much the definition of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

The article has this as part of their reasoning:

> That’s because the method a voter chooses often speaks to whom they voted for. Since the issue of voting by mail became highly politicized in the 2020 election, most mail votes nationally have been cast by Democratic voters, while most in-person Election Day votes have been cast by Republicans.

But this year R have focused on both early and mail-in ballots in a reversal of their traditional approach of eschewing or even attacking these voting options and it seems the general consensus is that for the 2024 elections as of last week, more Rs than Ds had actually opted for early and mail-in voting:

* https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/early-m...

* https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/trump-republi...

It seems a curious thing for AP (which has published pieces on this new trend) not to at least mention a disclaimer at this point? It seems like an obvious “what would people attack us for?” answer.

Disclosure: not an R or a D myself.

- Republican early voting has increased since 2020.

- Republicans have more in-person early votes, while Democrats have more mail-in early votes.

- Nationally, Democrats still have more overall early votes because early voting is dominated by mail-in votes.

Most of the vote counters would need to call the election centers over the phone and ask for results. Then they would input the results into a database system, which would feed into the overall tabulation for different elections.

I was one of the college students they would look for because they needed college students better at technology to be able to check the websites of some jurisdictions. So I ended up being paid a few hundred dollars to copy and paste one number from a website and eat amazing catered Italian food. For about 2 minutes of work and amazing food it was a great gig.