Picture an alternate history of the last two years where the National Popular Vote Compact was passed by enough states to reach 270 votes (and it withstood legal challenges). Suddenly this workaround means that every vote in every state does really count as much toward the outcome of the presidential election as votes in Florida and Pennsylvania will this year.

Now imagine Wyoming, a state with singular Republican party control over everything – the electoral commissions, ballot access, etc. In our universe, someone casting a ballot for Joe Biden in Wyoming isn’t the same as a ballot cast for Joe Biden in Georgia, where Brian Kemp’s goons will throw it in the shredder if the voter so much as sneezed on it. In Wyoming they more likely than not just don’t give a shit. But what if we’re in the Popular Vote universe? Are they really going to simply blithely count every Dem ballot that comes in the same way they did in 2016?

I seriously doubt that. It’s already maddening enough to have to scrutinize every “exurban” and “demographically shifting” patch of land in the ten states or so that are in play this year. I’ve read more about Maricopa County, Arizona in the past month than I’ve read about ethics in journalism in my entire life. A lot more.

Really don’t have the time to do the math and research but I can virtually guarantee you that the 3 million or so more votes that made up Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win came from states, counties, and precincts out in MAGA Land that had no skin in the game to suppress those voters. Skunkbutt, Arkansas didn’t mind having to report 17 Clinton votes along with 2,143 Trump votes. They would definitely mind if those actually meant something.

Now reforming the electoral college is not exactly at the top of everyone’s minds nowadays – even as it looms in basically every single conversation about the presidential election and the widely held assumption that the Orange Bastard wouldn’t have won in the first place if it’d already been done away with. I think that assumption is deeply flawed, for the reasons stated above.

The shopping list for things that would be achieved with a Biden win and a Dem Senate majority plus filibuster reform are an overhaul of judiciary with a possible, maybe even likely, expansion of the Supreme Court and DC and Puerto Rico statehood. The Electoral College would probably come up at some point after that. Now you might say it’s incumbent upon the states to get to 270 EC votes to make it happen and you’d be correct, but there’s no reason that a federal government under full Democratic control, and unencumbered by legal challenges couldn’t carrot and/or stick their way into getting individual states to do it (that’s how the drinking age got to be 21, it’s not a national law). It’s not a longshot at all if the Supreme Court is already at 15 justices.

But it’s dangerous without some serious, almost tectonic changes to the way elections are conducted at the federal level. We would need either unimpeachable poll watchers stationed at every voting location in the United States or some sort of new national technological standard for balloting that not everyone may be comfortable with – even progressives.

I’m not defending the electoral college at all, I think it needs to go, but we need some massive election procedure reform first before we think about making moves toward the final plunge. The GOP are sneaky, nihilistic sons of bitches and they always find way to exploit weaknesses in our Constitutional system to get what they want. They’re likely to take an epic beating next week, but they’ll be back at it in no time. Eliminating their Electoral College advantage might look like handing them an existential defeat. They might just see it as a gift.

– Commentary and art by Spartan