Should CA, TX, OK, and LA merge into a giant swing state, just for elections?

post by Thomas Kwa (thomas-kwa) · 2024-11-06T23:01:48.992Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

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As Americans know, the electoral college gives disproportionate influence to swing states, which means a vote in the extremely blue state of California was basically wasted in the 2024 election, as are votes in extremely red states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. State legislatures have the Constitutional power to assign their state's electoral votes. So why don't the four states sign a compact to assign all their electoral votes in 2028 and future presidential elections to the winner of the aggregate popular vote in those four states? Would this even be legal?

The population of CA is 39.0M (54 electoral votes), and the population of the three red states is 38.6M (55 electoral votes). The combined bloc would control a massive 109 electoral votes, and would have gone for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. Every state has an incentive to sign to increase their voters' influence in the national election.

There has been one similar proposal before: a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would go into effect when states controlling >50% of electoral votes sign it. It is only popular with blue states-- swing states don't want to reduce their influence, and red states don't want to give up the Republican electoral college advantage. Merging states would be far superior incentive-wise, as the influence of every signatory would increase and there would be essentially no expected net shift in the election results.

The compact should only go into effect once all 4 states sign, of course. But even then, there is another potential problem: Say that polls suggest the combined bloc is trending blue in 2028. The Louisiana legislature has an incentive to pull out at the last minute, and the other red states will follow. To prevent this, there must be a provision that once signed by all 4 states, the compact can't be repealed by any state until after the next election.

Smaller states have an even greater incentive to merge, e.g. Rhode Island with Montana. With only two states in the compact, there are fewer difficulties in getting all the states to sign at once. And due to their slightly higher electoral vote counts per voter, these small states' voters would quickly go from among the least important in the election to the most important.

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