America, Abraham Lincoln argued at Gettysburg, was founded on a simple idea:  “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  

The United States was the world’s first large modern representative democracy, albeit one that initially failed to live up to its lofty slogans. It took the Civil War, a suffragette movement and a civil rights movement to extend that promise to all people. One of the most important steps in our national journey toward Lincoln’s ideal was Reynolds v. Sims, a 1964 Supreme Court ruling that held that state legislative districts must be drawn to have equal populations — in other words, that “one person, one vote” was the law of the land, implicit in the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  

But one institution continues to fall short of that ideal: the Electoral College. Believe me, I  would know; I’m from Florida. 

In 2000, Al Gore won more votes nationwide than George W. Bush ’68, but Florida — the tipping point state in the Electoral College — was too close to call. After extensive litigation, the Supreme Court stepped in and halted the recount in Bush v. Gore, handing Bush the state by a few hundred votes and, with it, the presidency.  

In 2016, Donald Trump won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 — but was nonetheless elected president because the tipping point state that year in the Electoral College, Pennsylvania, was a little more red than the country overall.  

That might make you think that the Electoral College inherently favors Republicans. But that hasn’t always been true, and it won’t necessarily be true in the future. Yes, in 2016, 2020 and likely in 2024, the Electoral College will have a pro-Republican bias: the tipping point state will likely be more right-leaning than the country as a whole. 

However, in 2004, the Electoral College actually had a pro-Democratic bias. If John Kerry had won just over 100,000 more votes in Ohio, he would’ve won 272 votes in the Electoral College despite three million more Americans voting for Bush. In 2008 and 2012, the tipping point state — Colorado — was more blue than the national average. 

Early indicators for 2024 point towards an Electoral College map that still gives an edge to  Republicans, but one far smaller than in the last two elections. And as voters increasingly polarize around educational attainment, that bias is likely to shrink and ultimately invert, as Democratic gains with college-educated white voters in swing states are offset by Republican improvements with non-white voters concentrated in blue states.  

Reforming the Electoral College isn’t a Democratic or a Republican cause, it’s an American one. 

The most prominent reform proposal was put forward by professor Akhil Amar ’80 LAW ’84 in 2001. It is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPV for short. Instead of amending the Constitution, the NPV goes through the states. 

Under Article II of the Constitution, states may appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature  thereof may direct.” NPV is an interstate compact that requires all states bound to it to assign their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote — but only when the compact has enough signatories to decide the outcome of the election. In other words, the compact only activates once it reaches 270 electoral votes.  

Strategists from both parties are working to get NPV over that threshold. So far, states worth 209 electoral votes have signed on. The compact has been passed by both houses of the Maine legislature and is being considered in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Virginia. 

Unfortunately, NPV has yet to receive enough buy-in to come into effect before the presidential election this fall. But that doesn’t mean it should be ignored, and it is also the case that the 2024 election could very well be the last one where the president isn’t chosen by a national popular vote.

For one, the fact that Donald Trump is almost tied in national polls with Kamala Harris should put to bed the notion that a Republican cannot win the popular vote. And this isn’t actually a bad thing because voters deserve leaders who must fight to earn their votes rather than taking the vast majority of the country for granted.  

My home state, Florida, is not a swing state anymore. When we were, we received enormous attention from candidates vying for our votes. Cold hard math incentivizes campaigns and candidates to ignore the voices of most Americans not living in swing states under the current system. If the Electoral College will be decided by a handful of relatively large, closely divided swing states, then why pay attention to the millions of voters outside of them? Why court the millions of Democrats in Texas or Republicans in California if it won’t change the outcome? 

This is the sort of dynamic that undermines citizens’ trust in the system and causes young people to tell pollsters that elections don’t represent them and that the political system doesn’t work for people like them. Right now, they don’t. The NPVIC is one way we can change that and make every voter’s voice heard. 

GRYFFYN WILKENS-PLUMLEY is a junior in Grace Hopper College majoring in Global Affairs. He can be reached at gryffin.wilkens-plumley@yale.edu.