“You happened to ask people if they would be a voter,” said Justin Sheldon, a lawyer suing on behalf of Mr. Wright. (Mr. West was prevented from appearing on the Virginia ballot because of the program.)
Those seeking to reform the system have recently seen hope in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement in which states agree to only send voters for the candidate who wins the referendum.
So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have voted to join, representing 196 votes. The pact, which has worked its way through state houses for more than a decade, would go into effect if states with 270 voters agree, enough to rule the race.
Ms. Baca, the electoral college skeptic, backed the Colorado deal, which was passed by lawmakers last year and voted in a referendum in November. But she says that’s not enough.
“We have to go much further,” she said, noting that the electoral college was set up by the constitution and is therefore difficult to circumvent. “We have to change the constitution and let democracy work as we have told other democracies it should work.”
In 2016, Ms. Baca, who is also a former state lawmaker, received her largest platform to date to position herself on the electoral college.
That year, Mr. Trump lost the popular vote to Ms. Clinton by nearly three million votes, but won the electoral college and became president. With the help of a Colorado voter Michael Baca, then a Jamba Juice employee in his early twenties who had nothing to do with Ms. Baca, she began recruiting Republican voters to switch her votes from Mr. Trump. They became what the electoral college calls “unfaithful voters,” people who do not vote for the winner of the majority of the votes in their state.
