I'm hopeful the popular vote interstate compact[0] will get adopted by enough states to make it so each person's vote counts equally.
What you suggested above is a way to weight citizen's vote's even less equally than they do now, which is what I was responding to. The situation we have now is bad too, imo, but better than each state having an equal vote, irrespective of population.
Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains. Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country? This is a dark path to tread.
Presumably because they'd want something that another union state provides, and/or benefits that comes with being a larger country rather than an small independent one.
A union can't really be "equal" between all states unless all states contribute and benefit equally, and you can't really expect millions of people who live in a prosperous and populous state to be willing to discount their own voices so that the voices of those who may contribute less count far more than theirs. I'm not sure a perfect system exists -- it's all a series of tradeoffs, and a popular vote system would have its own -- but saying that the 700k people living in Alaska should have the exact same influence as the 40 million people living in California doesn't make things any better.
Ultimately, a country is made up of people, not political entities.
> Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't even remove unequal, state-based voting power, which is greatest in the Senate, not the Electoral College.
But direct popular election of the President doesn't impact state sovereignty, which is a matter of Constitutional limits on the federal government and guarantees to the states, which the states control changes to via the amendment process.
> Why would states remain in the union if California and New York forever dictate the direction of the country?
Why would states remain in the union if their citizens had only an equal voice?
Why do California and New York remain in the union when their citizens are denied an equal voice, and the states whose citizens are given a greater voice consistently drain their resources?
> Popular vote destroys any shred of state sovereignty that remains
Popular vote will only remove state sovereignty if the majority of people are aligned with that, at which point yeah, it should be done away with.
However, the reality is that people generally do agree that quite a few laws are state-level, not federal, and so even with a popular vote for federal laws, states would retain the sovereignty they have now.
Your reply there seems like a drastic overreaction. If we voted on our president via popular vote, we would have had a few different presidents in recent times, but I doubt any of them would have reduced state sovereignty significantly.
States are still free to set their own taxes, run their own police as they see fit, etc etc.
Basically, I don't think the popular vote would vote to repeal the 10th amendment, so it seems silly to say it would "destroy any shred of sovereignty". Especially since in this election, the outcome would have been identical.
I think a state ought to be free to vote its way out of the union along with out of any favorable trade agreement, mutual defense, educational opportunities for its citizens, freedom of immigration to the united states etc. It would immediately become poor and vulnerable but that is its citizens choice.
I'm hopeful the popular vote interstate compact[0] will get adopted by enough states to make it so each person's vote counts equally.
What you suggested above is a way to weight citizen's vote's even less equally than they do now, which is what I was responding to. The situation we have now is bad too, imo, but better than each state having an equal vote, irrespective of population.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...