Virginia signs national popular vote bill into law, joining interstate compact with 17 other states and District of Columbia

Virginia signs national popular vote bill into law, joining interstate compact with 17 other states and District of Columbia

A national majority vote for president is one step closer to reality after the Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed the national popular vote bill into law, joining an interstate compact with 17 other states and the District of Columbia.

Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state. The compact takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes – 270 of 538 – pass the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest. With Virginia, the compact now has 222 electors.

Every state that has so far enacted the compact has Democratic electoral majorities, including California, New York and Illinois. But legislation has been introduced in enough states to reach the 270-elector threshold, including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    • stickly@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 minutes ago

      It can’t enable anything without federal oversight via a constitutional amendment. Voting is within the purview of each individual state, so the states in this compact have no oversight on their peers (let alone the powers to demand a recount or rerun the election).

      For example, let’s say 20 states make up exactly 270 EC votes. The popular vote within those states (if allocated proportional to votes) ends up as 136/270 to candidate X. The other 30 states report universal support for candidate Y.

      By rights, Y should win with 402 EC votes and 74% of the popular vote. But if the compact chooses to ignore those states as fraudulent then candidate X wins with a mere 26%.

      Similar fuckery can happen with late reporting of votes or a state in the compact reneging on the agreement and voting against the rest. There’s absolutely nothing binding about this, it’s just a pinky promise among these states.