Mar 7, 2019 3 min read

Considering how tumultuous his presidency has been and how little he has done to mollify his detractors, it would be dumbfounding if Donald Trump had somehow managed to not have legions of critics who long for the day when he is ejected from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Sure, politics ain’t beanbag, as the saying has it, and democracy is messy and disputatious. But here’s a thought: Trump’s critics would maybe – just maybe – be a tiny bit less fervid in their opposition to the president if he had won the popular vote in 2016.

Instead, Hillary Clinton beat him by almost 3 million votes. But Trump ended up becoming president because he won the Electoral College, which was born out of an 18th century compromise between those who wanted the president to be directly elected, and those who believed that Congress should make the choice. The fact that more Americans wanted Clinton to be president than Trump is salt in the wound to everyone who loathes his policies or his provocative behavior.

There have been numerous calls over the years for the elimination of the Electoral College and the direct election of the president. In 1968, for instance, the American Bar Association called the Electoral College “archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect and dangerous.” But the likelihood of the Constitution being amended and the Electoral College being eliminated is exceedingly small. So, right now, the best hope for everyone who would like the president to be the choice of at least a plurality of voters is the National Popular Vote interstate compact.

Here’s how it would work: States that sign on would pledge to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Right now, the states that have come on-board are primarily Democratic-leaning states like Massachusetts and Illinois, but states that trend red should feel just as motivated to be part of this. Consider that, in 2004, John Kerry would have become president in 2004 with a shift in 60,000 votes in Ohio, despite losing the popular vote to President Bush by 3 million votes. Just because Democratic winners of the popular vote have lost in the Electoral College twice in the last 20 years doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen one day to a Republican.

Removing the shackles of the Electoral College from our presidential campaigns would open the process and truly make every vote count. As it stands, presidential campaigns are almost entirely transacted in a handful of states that are up for grabs, while the rest of the country is ignored. Rest assured, whoever the major-party nominees are in 2020, they’ll be stopping at every crossroads in Wisconsin. Same in Florida. Not so much in Wyoming, Connecticut, Alabama, Oregon, or any other state where their presidential preferences are considered a foregone conclusion. But, rest assured, there are Republicans in California and Democrats in Oklahoma who would like to be courted by the candidates and feel like their votes matter. And that could well lift voter participation across the board.

The president of the United States is the one and only office for which every American casts a vote. It’s time that all of those votes have equal weight.