@Matter True, but my idea could be done without changing the U.S. constitution, and by reducing the granularity of the races, it would decrease the likelihood of that happening. (Working on jerrymandering, and reducing the possibility of faithless electors would help too)

@murph you don't need to change the US constitution, there's this compact between states that would in practice make the vote be popular if enough states sign on

@Matter @murph

Both ideas are hard to get states to sign on to, because it effectively decreases the voting power of individual states

@benjaminpaikjones @Matter Seems like it would decrease the state's weight in the election, in favor of the voters. So, yes, harder to get through state legislatures.

@Matter Couldn't that also disenfranchise voters, making each state winner-take-all, but for the collective group of states? If your state joined on, and voted overwhelmingly opposite all the other states in the compact, those votes would again not count? I'm not sure that seems better, in my opinion.

@murph @Matter The en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National… takes force only once the states that joined have electoral majority. The states vote according to the national popular vote. That means the states lose their significance and every voter's vote counts.

@Matter @murph A method similar to the one suggested here is already used in Maine and Nebraska, but with a twist:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_S…

Arguably it could make the vote even more skewed from the popular vote if say all "safe blue" states kept their FPtP and "safe red" states split their vote. That would make one side unfairly weakly represented.

Maybe that's why these states went with a compromise: each congressional district picks one elector and the state as a whole picks two.

As it happens, in practice Maine is mainly blue and Nebraska is mainly red and in the latest election they each threw one vote to the "other" side, so it evened out.