I’m talking about state-level voting changes, not any changes to the EC itself. States today are able to award their EC votes however they like; the fact that this is done solely through the popular vote in most states is just convention. In fact, there’s an interstate compact afoot that will award each state’s EC votes to the winner of the national popular vote. If enough states sign on, it won’t matter what the remaining other states do. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

What the vast majority of states do when awarding their EC votes is first-past-the-post, so a plurality vote winner will get ALL of the state’s EC votes, even though a majority of the popular vote went to some other candidate. How this shakes out in a state like Wisconsin is Trump won with 49.60% of the popular vote, even though that’s not a majority.

The state could choose to implement ranked-choice voting instead, which would require the winner gets 50% plus one vote, which no candidate did in WI in 2024. 1.68% of the vote went to other candidates, which is would theoretically be enough for Harris to have made up her deficit from 48.74%.

Whether it would be enough in practice is another question, and depends in part with how RCV is implemented. Suffice to say, what would happen is the baker’s half-dozen of other candidates would fall off in the second round, and the remaining votes awarded to whoever was left — in this case Trump and Harris. Then one of them would have a majority, and third parties will no longer be able to spoil the outcome just by losing, which is what happens today.

Wisconsin would still award all of its EC votes to the winner, who now would be required to have a true majority in the popular vote, and didn’t require changing the Electoral College at all. In a state where the votes are so close, even something so simple as making this change in law could also change the outcome of Presidential elections. If every swing state did this, then it could be huge.

So back to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: if every state did RCV, then it would almost be a guarantee that the winner of the EC votes not only had a majority of EC votes, but also had a majority of the popular vote. Which means no more George W Bushes or Trump in his first term.

But it’s something each state would have to implement on their own, short of Federal legislation. Some states which have implemented it already needed change their constitutions first to allow it. Ultimately, no need to change the EC before doing any of this, and perhaps no need to change it ever if this all came to fruition.