Draft legislation for an Interstate Compact for non-plurality voting methods
Seth VW
Dear CES forum,
I'm trying to draft legislation at the state level that would create (for lack of a better name) a National Voting Freedom Interstate Compact. Modeled on the strategy of the NPVIC (but distinct from it), it would be an agreement among states to use non-plurality voting methods to count the national vote, and pledge their electors to the winner of this method once 270 EC votes worth of states have passed the Compact.
The various voting methods would be combined as following this article: http://rangevoting.org/NPVtrainwreck.html (link is external) (I don't know enough of the math to agree or disagree on this exact formula; if you have suggested changes I'm open to them.) The one thing I would not want from this article in the legislation is the idea that you'd immediately start lumping the votes of whomever signed the Compact. I believe this would only end up creating one big blue state lump (or possibly a separate big red state lump), which swing states would never want to join for fear of being swamped out of relevance. It also seems riskier to me for legislators to pass something that immediately takes effect, rather than something that only takes effect once it reaches 270 votes.
I would love any help you all can offer in drafting good text for this legislation. I would personally love to see this election passed by November so people don't get stuck in the Duverger's Law trap forever. But this is extremely ambitious of course; mostly, I would just love to use the historic unpopularity of the major party candidates to build support for such change at whatever (hopefully not too distant) point in the future it can actually get on the books of enough states.
I'm personally a fan of approval voting or score voting, but I want this legislation to include instant runoff voting, since it seems to be gaining popularity in places like Maine, CA, and among leftists in general, and it's clearly superior to plurality voting.
I'll be working on contacting state legislators in my home state of Colorado and getting my friends to do so elsewhere as well, but it would be great if we could show them actual draft legislation to help them understand our ideas. And I'm sure that anything I drafted myself would be far inferior to whatever you all could help me draft.
Thank you! Let's see if we can capitalize on the broader interest and motivation that this terrible election is creating for making a better voting system.
Sincerely,
Seth Vitrano-Wilson
PS Here's a link to the petition I made on the subject, if you're also interested in signing or spreading it to your friends & contacts: https://www.change.org/p/voters-want-real-choices-end-plurality-voting-and-the-lesser-of-two-evils