Question Everything.: 2022

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.^[2]^[3] As of June 2022, it has been adopted by fifteen states and the District of Columbia. These states have 195 electoral votes, which is 36% of the Electoral College and 72% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.

Certain legal questions may affect implementation of the compact. Some legal observers believe that the compact will require explicit congressional consent under the Compact Clause of Article I, Section X of the U.S. Constitution, or that states have the plenary power to appoint presidential electors as prescribed by the compact under the Elections Clause of Article II, Section I. Other legal observers disagree that the power of states is broad enough to appoint their electors in accordance with the compact, and that the Electoral College cannot be altered to appoint presidential electors in accordance with the national popular vote except by a constitutional amendment.

Find out more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

Listen to RADIOLAB episode NO SPECIAL DUTY - police are evil.

Since the massacre that took the lives of 19 schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, people across the world began to ask versions of one question: why did police wait outside the door instead of protecting the kids?

It's not the first time this question has come up. Two years ago, as she watched police respond to the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, Producer B.A. Parker wondered: what are police for? With the help of our Producer Sarah Qari, she found that the United States’ Supreme Court had given this a most consequential and bewildering answer.

We decided to re-air this episode to shed light on how a case from 2005 upended our assumptions about the role police are meant to play in our lives.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Radiolab is on YouTube! (https://zpr.io/MTSFMLXQWDkE) Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!

Become a member of Radiolab