U.S. Senate See Full Big Line

(D) J. Hickenlooper*

(R) Somebody

80%

20%

Governor See Full Big Line

(D) Phil Weiser (D) Joe Neguse (D) Michael Bennet

50% 50% 50%

Att. General See Full Big Line

(D) M. Dougherty

(D) Jena Griswold

(D) Brian Mason

60%↑

30%↑

20%↓

Sec. of State See Full Big Line

(D) A. Gonzalez

(D) George Stern

(R) Sheri Davis

50%↑

40%

30%

State Treasurer See Full Big Line

(D) Brianna Titone

(R) Kevin Grantham

(D) Jerry DiTullio

60%↑

30%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) Somebody

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Somebody

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd*

(D) Somebody

80%

40%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert*

(D) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank*

(D) Somebody

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen*

(R) Somebody

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(R) Gabe Evans*

(D) Manny Rutinel

(D) Yadira Caraveo

45%↓

40%↑

30%

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

December 20, 2016 11:01 AM UTC

2017 Can be the year Colorado helps reform the Electoral College.

1 Comments
by: khmeck

Dear Reader at ColoradoPols,

Would you like to help reform the electoral college?

Many Coloradans are frustrated (understandably!) that for the second time in just five elections, the candidate America voted for won’t become president. This year it wasn’t even close: Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes, i.e. more than 2%! But Donald Trump is our President-elect anyway because the nation uses an electoral college which was designed by this nation’s founders to ensure slave states the ability to enslave their residents (and deny them voting rights) without losing clout in national elections. A legacy of that is that we elect our nation’s presidents with an electoral college, which is to say in a weird and pretty fundamentally undemocratic way.

So here’s the solution. 2017 could be the year that Colorado joins the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (the NPVIC for short). Once enough states join, the NPVIC will take effect, and all the member states will assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, which will guarantee the electoral college elects the person who wins the popular vote.

In a little more detail, here’s how the NPVIC works: Per Article II of the Constitution, each state’s legislature chooses how to assign the state’s electoral college votes. Each NPVIC state passes a law pledging its electoral votes to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. The compact is written so it will only take effect once states making up a majority of the electoral college make the same commitment. In other words, as states join the compact, momentum builds, but nothing actually changes in any state until the electoral votes of the states in the compact add up to 270 or more. (165 electoral votes worth of states have joined the NPVIC so far.) After that, all the states in the compact switch to awarding their states to the popular vote winner, so whoever wins the national popular vote thereby wins enough electoral college votes to win the election. (If that doesn’t make sense, and I admit I’m struggling to explain this in plain English, then read at this link. Or ask questions in the comments.)

Of course, passing a law to add Colorado to the NPVIC has been tried before. The Colorado House of Representatives voted to add Colorado to the NPVIC in 2013, and the Colorado Senate has voted to add Colorado to the NPVIC in 2006 and 2007. Each time, the bill has died in the Republican-controlled chamber due to opposition from some Republicans who don’t mind if we elect our president in an undemocratic way, so long as they think it’s undemocratic in their favor. (Of course opponents of the NPVIC probably will try to explain it another way, and in fairness, this is a topic worth thinking and discussing carefully before deciding upon.) In a typical year, voters might not care that much if Republicans vote against (or, as it actually happened, table indefinitely without voting on) some obscure-seeming bill about joining an interstate compact that might someday remove one of the more prominent remaining vestiges of slavery in our Constitutional framework.

Something suggests to me that 2017 is not a typical year. One, every time you talk to anyone about reforming the electoral college, you can talk about how Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2 million votes. See how fun that is to say? Given our President-elect’s famously thin skin, and his record-low approval ratings as an incoming President… what do you think, O readers of ColoradoPols? Are there very many people in Colorado who are likely to enjoy talking about how badly he lost the popular vote at every chance they get?

Thank you for reading.

P.S. Here are some notes and additional resources:
1. There is an organization with a website at www.nationalpopularvote.com which is promoting the NPVIC. I’m not affiliated with them. Their website includes a webform where you can enter your zip code to contact your state legislators about the NPVIC.
2. The New York Times Editorial Board recently ran an editorial supporting the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which you can read here. That’s behind a paywall if you are past your 10 free articles for this month, but there are similar articles in Slate and The Huffington Post and The Week and DailyKos that are all free.
3. For any legislators who may be reading this, who may find the National Conference of State Legislatures to be a generally trustworthy resource for learning more about this, the link you want is here.
4. Anyone who wants to read more about the history of efforts to reform the electoral college may find the relevant wikipedia page particularly helpful.
5. There are several other states that may pass the NPVIC this year. For example, Oregon.

One thought on “2017 Can be the year Colorado helps reform the Electoral College.”

mamajama55 says:

December 20, 2016 at 9:10 pm

That's a well-written and informative diary, khmeck. Might I suggest a graphic or two to break up the text blocks on your next diary?

I would support Colorado's joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

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2017 Can be the year Colorado helps reform the Electoral College.

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