In February 2017, New Hampshire Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan voiced support for replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote system, but lamented that such a change would require a constitutional amendment, “which, as Hassan put it, would be ‘a challenge,’ at the very least.”
However, there is no need to get mired down in the constitutional amendment process when our system already gives states the power to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has already been passed by jurisdictions equaling 189 electoral votes. Once states with 270 electoral votes enact the Compact, it will go into effect and the person who gets the most votes will become the president.
New Hampshire could be the next state to pass the Compact, which is currently under consideration as House Bill 541. New Hampshire newspaper Concord Monitor has endorsed the Compact because it will make candidates court voters outside of swing states and will make every vote matter across the country:
The Electoral College system leads candidates to ignore states that they consider sure winners or losers and focus on swing states like Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire. It leads presidents, as can be seen by Trump’s 10 visits to Ohio since he took office, to curry favor with swing states while in office and ignore states they don’t believe will support their re-election.
Replacing the Electoral College with a system that rewards the winner of the popular vote would give candidates an incentive to compete in every state. As in other elections, the person who wins the most votes should become president, not the candidate who, with a minority of votes in winner-take-all system, is declared the winner by the Electoral College.
The National Popular Vote compact is a way to restore fairness to the system without amending the Constitution. It would make future presidents more legitimate rather than accidents of an outdated and flawed system.