FiveThirtyEight: The Movement To Skip The Electoral College May Take Its First Step Back

As we’ve written previously, states that join the National Popular Vote compact agree to cast their electoral votes for the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide — not necessarily the candidate who carries the state. And the compact only goes into effect once states worth 270 electoral votes (a majority in the Electoral College) have joined, thus ensuring that its signatories have enough electoral votes to guarantee that the national popular vote winner becomes president. Currently, 15 states plus the District of Columbia, together worth 196 electoral votes, have ratified the compact.

Four of those states, including Colorado, joined the National Popular Vote movement just this year, but it remains a controversial issue — for example, it recently failed to pass in Maine and was vetoed in Nevada. And opponents in Colorado were upset enough about its passage that they are now actively trying to repeal the law. Earlier this month, the organization Coloradans Vote said it submitted more than 227,198 signatures to the Colorado secretary of state in an effort to subject the law to voter referendum in the 2020 election. With that number of signatures, chances are very good it will make the ballot, making it the first time voters in any state will vote directly on the National Popular Vote compact. [...]

So the real question becomes whether voters will reject the legislature’s law and make Colorado the first state to exit the National Popular Vote compact. And polls suggest it would be a competitive election! Nationally, 53 percent of Americans said the popular vote should determine the president, and 43 percent said the Electoral College should, according to an April/May NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats, there is a wide partisan gap on the question: 79 percent of Democrats preferred the popular vote, while 74 percent of Republicans favored the Electoral College.

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