USA elections | The US electoral system could be overturned

The “sacred” votes of the electors are traditionally carried to Congress every four years. Photo: imago/VCG With the elections last Tuesday, a large number of political offices in the USA will be filled. As is well known, the president's decision is not, but how Donald Trump's successor will be voted on in two years could have been fundamentally changed by the Democrats' landslide victory.

Every four years the world is amazed at the grotesque system of the Electoral College, the assembly of electors that only meets months after the actual election day and takes the final vote on the presidency. Depending on the population, each state allows a certain number of electors to vote for the candidate who received the majority of votes in their own state, no matter how narrow the lead there was.

The problem is that five times in history, candidates, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016, secured the most votes and moved into the White House, even though the majority of voters nationwide had voted for a different candidate. For a country that considers itself to be the “best democracy in the world,” this is an unparalleled embarrassment.

For a long time, abolishing the Electoral College seemed unrealistic because it has been in the Constitution since the founding of the United States. Southerners had it established there at the end of the 18th century in order to expand their position of power in Washington on the basis of the large number of (ineligible to vote) slaves in their own states. A constitutional change requires completely illusory majorities. But opponents of the Electoral College have been working on a detour for two decades. And finally the time seems ripe for it.

That detour is called the rather unwieldy National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Essentially, it's a compact that states join - Maryland was the first in 2007. It stipulates that the electors of all participating states must elect the candidate who received the most votes nationwide as president, regardless of whether that candidate was victorious in their own state or not. The Electoral College will not be abolished, just used differently.

In fact, there is nothing in the Constitution about how states should decide which candidate their electors support. In the beginning there were no elections; the decisions were often made by the state parliaments. Only later did the people's demand for stronger direct democracy prevail.

So far, 18 states and the capital Washington D.C. a corresponding NPVIC law was passed. However, it will only come into force when enough others are added and an absolute majority of voters is reached. That would be the case with 270, so far there are only 222.

But the number could rise significantly very soon, because whenever the Democratic Party was able to win the complete package consisting of a governor and both chambers of parliament in individual states, they made the NPVIC pact into law there. It was precisely this level of power that she gained on Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. The last votes are still being counted in Arizona, but everything looks like the Democrats will be successful here too. The five states collectively have 61 electors, and even without Arizona it would just be enough to get the NPVIC over the hurdle of 270 if the rest pass the law in the coming months.

»Power is there to change things. We have momentum on our side. Let’s finally use it.”

If this happens and the plan is not stopped by the Supreme Court - there will certainly be lawsuits against it - the presidential election campaign in the USA would be completely turned upside down. There would no longer be any concentration on the infamous “swing states” if every vote suddenly counted equally. Voter turnout could increase because Democrats in deeply conservative states and Republicans in liberal regions would no longer have the impression that their votes were worthless.

According to polls, more than 60 percent of US citizens want to abolish the Electoral College. And the NPVIC is getting more and more followers. The day after the election, the influential left-wing YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen promised his more than five million followers: "Power is there to change things. I will invite all the governors of these five states to my show and pressurize them on the issue. I won't stop doing this until it's done. We have momentum on our side. Let’s finally use it.”

Even the two-party system would potentially be put to the test, since at least presidential candidates would no longer have to rely on party machines to get on the ballot in every state. Of course, the election campaign would still be extremely expensive. Nevertheless, the supposedly best democracy in the world has never been so close to the most basic democratic principle: one person, one vote. And the Democratic Party could live up to its name.

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