I have been sent an email by my friend Ian in North Carolina with the following message:
“With the democratic wins in the governor races, The Democrats could see an end to the electoral college. Your thoughts please.”
My thoughts are perhaps a bit ponderous.
It is indeed a question that is on the minds of quite a number of citizens in the United States. The written Constitution of the United States, sets out quite clearly how Presidential elections are meant to be conducted, who is eligible to run for office and just what the executive branch of government is entitled to do. Article One of the Constitution establishes the legislative branch and Article Three establish the Judicial Branch. The checks and balances are thus written out.
Clause Two and Three of Article two sets out the Electoral College and how the Elector are chosen in each state. In effect is is the electors in each state who elect the President. Each state has a number of electors which is established according to the size of its population. When a candidate is elected in any state, then the electors in effect are pledged to cast their vote for that winning candidate. We have all seen this play-out on election days in the United States.
It can therefore sometimes happen that the candidate who gets the most electoral college votes may not have as many of the total popular vote across the whole country as the other ‘losing’ candidate. This has caused some concern to the American electorate for a number of years. It is, in most peoples perception, unfair and undemocratic. Indeed, it would appear that as of September 2024 more than 63% of American would want the popular vote and not the electoral College to decide who is president.
The procedure being written into the Constitution, it is sacrosanct. The Founding Fathers, however, did provide for possible changes and laid out a procedure by which the Constitution can be amended. This is contained in Article Five. It is not particularly complicated, but if can be long and drawn out as it requires at least two thirds of both houses of Congress to approve a proposed amendment, or through a Constitutional Convention called by two-thirds of State Legislatures, and then has to be ratified by three fourths of the States or 38 of the 50 States.
There is also another method of adapting the constitution without having to go through the amendment process, which has been devised under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact of NPVIC. This is an agreement among a groupe of US States and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral vote to which ever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 States and the District of Columbia, regardless of which ticket won more votes in their individual state/district. It was introduced in 2009 and would only come into effect when it would guarantee that outcome.
There is an item in wikipedia which states:
"In 2007, NPVIC legislation was introduced in 42 states. It was passed by at least one legislative chamber in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hawaii. Maryland became the first state to join the compact when Governor Martin O'Malley signed it into law on April 10, 2007.
By 2019, NPVIC legislation had been introduced in all 50 states.[1] As of September 2026, the NPVIC has been adopted by eighteen states and the District of Columbia. Together, they have 222 electoral votes, which is 41.3% of the Electoral College and 82.2% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
In Nevada, the Legislature passed Assembly Joint Resolution 6 in 2023, but failed to pass it again in 2025 to amend the state's constitution.[128] States where only one chamber has passed the legislation are Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Bills seeking to repeal the compact in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington have failed.
No Republican governor has signed or allowed the compact to enter into law, though it has passed several Republican-led chambers and committees. This partisan split, if it continues, will affect the likelihood of the compact reaching the enactment threshold."
“ Democrats finally have the votes to make the Electoral College obsolete.
“Blue wave” wins have produced enough Democratic state governments to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Several statewide and state legislative contests in this week’s midterm elections have resulted in new Democratic Party “trifecta” governments — places where the party is now in control of both houses of the state legislature as well as the governor’s office.
With these new wins, Democrats have the opportunity to do something once considered nearly impossible: implement a popular vote model for electing future presidents of the United States, to replace the archaic and unpopular Electoral College.
Due to the mechanics of the Electoral College, five presidential “winners” in U.S. history have taken office who did not win the approval of most voters, including twice over the past three decades. While a constitutional amendment would be needed to formally abolish the Electoral College — which is unlikely to happen anytime soon, even after this week’s “blue wave” — there is a workaround called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which doesn’t require such an amendment.
Per Article II of the U.S. Constitution, each state is mandated to 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.” These electors end up voting for president and vice president.
All states today direct their electors to vote based on their own results in presidential races. If a Democratic candidate wins in California, for example, all 54 of its electors are people chosen to support that candidate in the Electoral College.
But under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that would change. States that have agreed to abide by the compact would direct their electors to support the candidate who won the national popular vote, not who their state alone voted for. For example, if a Republican candidate won the national popular vote but California voters preferred the Democrat, the state’s electors would be directed to the Republican under the compact.
Such a move would not be unconstitutional, as it complies with the Article II rule that allows states to determine for themselves how to distribute electors.
The compact doesn’t come into play until it is joined by enough states, totalling a majority of all Electoral College votes (at this time, 270 votes of the 538). Currently, only 18 states plus Washington, D.C. have signed on to the compact, totalling 222 Electoral College votes, which means the old, undemocratic system of selecting the president remains in place for now.
Before Tuesday’s elections, multiple paths were under consideration for attaining the remaining 48 electoral votes needed. However, the midterm results have produced one such path.
Democrats have won new trifecta governments in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Democrats in Arizona are also claiming to have won a trifecta. In total, those five states, which have not yet passed the compact, make up 61 electoral votes. Even without Arizona, the 50 electoral votes the other four states have are more than enough to implement the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
The question is no longer if Democrats can pass a popular vote model for president, but whether they have the will or determination to do so. If those states opt to join the compact, it could go into effect as soon as the 2028 presidential election.
Notably, an Economist/YouGov poll this past summer found that 56 percent of Americans would approve of a Constitutional amendment to implement a popular vote model in presidential elections, rather than the Electoral College. Only 23 percent opposed the idea, while 21 percent were unsure.”
Mr Walker makes a compelling argument, and according to some polls two thirds of the American public would approve of the Compact being adopted.
Quite apart from the electoral college, if one is considering the matter of democracy and government of the people, by the people and for the people than I suggest there are other considerations to be taken into account. So far as the United States is concerned, there is a population of some 350 million people. In 2024 there were 173.85 million registered electors across the country. In the 2020 election Mr Biden received over 81 million votes and Mr Trump just over 74 million votes. In 2024 Mr Trump received just over 77 million votes and Ms Harris just over 75 million votes. That is a very sizeable number of Americans who did not support the winning president, yet they are having to grin and bear it. The population of the United Kingdom is at present just under 70 million people. Just image what it would be like for an entire country to be effectively disenfranchised.
You may think it a matter of majority rule, and there are other branches of government where the people are represented by senators and house representatives. But hardly true democratic representation by a head of state, particularly when it comes to the kind or power being exerted by a President of the United States. I would propose another kind of check in that there should be no twin ticket of Presidential candidate linked with a Vice-Presidential Candidate, and that each candidate for president would stand on their own and the person who came second would be elected as Vice President. Both block of voters would then be represented with the majority taking the lead. The Vice President would then truly be a check on the President, particularly as the Vice President sits as president of the Senate and settles all disputes in the event of a tied vote in the Senate.
In the meantime I would strongly urge the Democratic Congress and new wholly democratic state legislators and executives to firmly adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
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