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Coloradans vote to always give their electoral votes to the national winner — someday

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Voters gave their stamp of approval to the Colorado Legislature's decisions to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Marc Piscotty/Getty Images
Sara Swann
By Sara SwannNov 04, 2020
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

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Colorado will remain committed to pledging its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, just as soon as enough states decide the outcome do the same.

Last year the state enacted a law under which it joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which 14 other states and D.C. have embraced. Voters statewide narrowly decided Tuesday to affirm that decision. The referendum got 52 percent of the vote in complete but unofficial returns — a winning margin of about 135,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast.

This is a small, but not insignificant, win for reform advocates who say doing away with the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote will boost turnout and civic engagement because more Americans will feel their vote matters.

Being part of the pact means promising all the state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide — but only once states forming an Electoral College majority sign on. That magic number is 270. The other places, all reliably Democratic, have a combined 187 votes, so the deal is a long way from kicking in.

Colorado has 9 electoral votes but is likely to gain a 10th next year due to population growth. It has switched from red to purple to pretty blue in recent years. Joe Biden carried the state Tuesday by about 15 points, the third straight win for the Democratic nominee but the largest winning margin from the party in modern times, and the Democrats also took a Senate seat from the GOP.

Considering two of the most recent presidents — George W. Bush and Donald Trump — got elected despite finishing second in the popular vote, proponents say the compact assures whichever candidate is the most popular nationwide is the winner.

Transitioning out of the Electoral College system and into the popular vote system via the compact is completely legal, its advocates say, and doesn't require clearing the high hurdles of amending the Constitution. But GOP leaders nationwide fear this switch would disadvantage their party by turning all voting power over to blue cities.

Opponents of the pact in Colorado also argued that its adoption would assure presidential campaigns are conducted entirely in the metropolitan areas of the biggest states — meaning the vast rural reaches of the state would get ignored.


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Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities

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(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorizes Black and brown communities with racial profiling, kidnappings, inhumane treatment, fatal abuse, and killings, private prison investors are asking how ICE can detain more people to increase their profits. Private prison corporations have long profited from immigration enforcement, but they are expecting a financial windfall under the current administration. These corporations are politically and financially situated to rapidly increase detention capacity and cash in on the president’s goal of deporting one million people per year. Stopping these corporations from lining politicians’ campaign coffers is a necessary first step in ensuring that our government is accountable to the people it serves, rather than the corporations it contracts with.

ICE and private prison corporations have long had a symbiotic relationship. Ninety percent of ICE's detainees were already being held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations before President Trump began his second term. CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the largest private prison corporations that lead the multi-billion dollar industry, have been contracting with immigration enforcement for decades. By 2023, ICE contracts accounted for 43 percent of CoreCivic’s revenue and 30 percent of GEO Group’s revenue. The majority of each corporation’s lobbyists have held government positions, and GEO Group’s board of directors “has extensive links with ICE.” The relationship between private prisons and ICE is the embodiment of the “'revolving door’ between the federal government and the private sector.”

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As live sporting events go, nothing comes close to the World Cup. I was in the stands when South Africa, my birth country, hosted the event in 2010 after decades of exclusion from global athletics. In June of this year, I had a full-circle moment when South Africa played in the knockout rounds for the first time, and I stood with my two American sons, arms around them, singing South Africa's anthem — the only national anthem that weaves multiple languages into a single, unifying song. Later in the week, I was in the stands again, cheering Spain's win over Austria, a country to which my only connections are a brief holiday…and the fact that my mother's family fled from there during the Inquisition.

The magic of the World Cup is that everyone in the stands wears the flags and shirts of countries that are “theirs” in some way. For some, it’s where they were born; for others, where they live or where their ancestors hailed from. For some, it is simply a country they have adopted for the afternoon. It is impossible to know how deep a person’s connection runs simply by looking at them. And next to a person waving one team’s colors is a stranger, family member, or close friend supporting the opposing team—or wearing the jersey of a team that isn’t playing that day at all.

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On June 4, 1876, on the eve of our Nation’s centennial, the Transcontinental Express completed its inaugural voyage across America’s newly constructed coast-to-coast railroad, traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific in just 83 hours. This milestone marked the end of the Railroad Race and the beginning of the Gilded Age, epitomized by its rail barons and drastic wealth disparity.

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KENOSHA, Wis. —Community leaders, faith leaders and civil rights advocates gathered this month to condemn anti-immigrant posters that appeared across Kenosha, as police continue investigating who is responsible.

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