[The Soup Nazi]

(cont'd)

The U.S. Constitution gives each state the power to choose how their members to the Electoral College are chosen. Maine, for example, divides its four votes among two at-large votes and one for each congressional district. Nebraska uses a similar system. But what if a state pledged to give all its Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter how that candidate did in that particular state?

That’s the strategy of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It only goes into effect once states with 270 combined Electoral College votes (enough to win an election) sign up. So far 11 states and the District of Columbia, representing a total of 172 E.C. votes, have passed laws agreeing to this system. They need states representing 99 more votes to join up—and then it will need to survive the inevitable court challenges. But right now it’s the most plausible path to restoring majority rule to the United States.

Just because it will require a long, difficult struggle to end these inequalities in American democracy, that’s no reason to give up. The sooner we start, the sooner we will finish. In the meantime, we should keep these anti-democratic structures in mind whenever small-state right-wingers pontificate about “the will of the people” or claim that “the voters have spoken.”

Conservatives may control 50 seats in the Senate, but those 50 senators represent only 44% of the population. Donald Trump may have been president for four years, but he received three million votes less than Hillary Clinton. Let’s keep in mind what really is the will of the majority and exactly what the people have spoken.