This is how the US presidential election should be reformed

Fight for electoral reform in the USA

There are still 48 voters missing for the big change

For 20 years, an initiative has been fighting to determine the US president via direct election. Now another state has strengthened the support camp.

In the USA, an initiative to change the rules for electing the president has cleared another hurdle. The organization National Popular Vote Project is committed to ensuring that in the future a presidential candidate will no longer be elected by voters from the individual states, as is currently provided for in the US Constitution. Instead, a simple majority vote should apply, in which the only decisive factor is which candidate receives the most votes nationwide.

Now the state of Virginia has also decided to join the initiative. A total of 18 states now support the declaration of intent. Together, these states currently have 222 electors. In order for the change to actually take effect, at least 270 voters would be required.

This is a process that has been going on for decades, explained the initiative’s strategist, Alyssa Cass, in an interview with the US media “NPR News Now”. “This initiative began 20 years ago. Since then, the process has been slow but steady and has continued to evolve.” In Virginia, progress was made possible by the three-fold Democratic majority that has prevailed there since last year’s election. According to Democratic Representative Dan Helmer, it took ten years in Virginia alone to mobilize the necessary majority for the project.

Support for the initiative largely falls along party lines in the US between Democrats and Republicans. A Pew Research Center survey conducted ahead of the 2024 presidential election won by Donald Trump found that eight in 10 Democrats want to replace the electoral college system with direct voting. Among Republicans, only 46 percent supported it.

One reason for this divide could be that the last two presidents to come into office without a majority of the national vote were Republicans: George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. However, when he was re-elected in 2024, Trump also won a majority of the vote nationwide.

Proponents of the initiative argue that the presidential election is currently often made in a few closely contested states, sometimes by just a few thousand votes. Significant voting majorities in Democratic or Republican states, on the other hand, are significantly less important.