@dangillmor Marshall is right. The proposed run around the Electoral College dangerously weakens the federal system, shifting power from states to the White House. It's naive to imagine everyone would simply add up individual state tallies and happily accept that. That tally would have no legal imprimatur. Why not challenge it in court? Why wouldn't voters in states that give their EC votes to candidates who *lost* in those states raise the obvious Constitutional issue in the courts?

@dangillmor these are reasonable complaints. However the closest election by popular vote since 1900 was by about 113k votes in 1960. That's not really that close. Even then, I'll take the problems this causes for the simple fact that a guy who lost the popular vote by nearly 3m doesn't become the President.

@dangillmor By the same token, a rogue state can just fix the federal House or Senate elections the way it wants, so that all these elected belong to a party it favours, no?

@dangillmor Sorry, I don't think his argument is compelling. We've already had election disputes under the current system: Bush v Gore, and all of the Trump fights in 2020. And no, you don't need to federalize elections in any way: every state reports a vote count, put out by the secretary of state's office or the equivalent. The popular vote is simply the sum of 51 sets of reported numbers.

@dangillmor part of the strategic risks mentioned there stems from the premise that there can only be two parties. If those "blue states" would upgrade their elections to STAR or Approval+runoff and more multi-member districts within the state/county/city seats, we would start to see reduced polarization and better coalition organizing at the federal level much sooner than any constitutional change could come from the two captive parties.