The National Popular Vote—you know, the state-based plan for electing the President by seeing who gets the largest number of votes cast by citizens of the United States of America (and achieving this goal without messing with the Electoral College and the Constitution)—sank a three-point shot yesterday.

The outside shooter was Mayor of the District of Columbia, Adrian Fenty, who signed a bill adding the District’s three electoral votes to the seventy-three already pledged by the six states—Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington state—that have passed similar bills. When and if enough states to account for 270 electoral votes—a majority—have done the same, the plan would take effect. From then on (but not until then), the compacting states would cast all their electoral votes for the candidate with the most human-being votes in the entire nation. That candidate would be elected. And the vote of every human being in every state in the entire nation would be worth casting and worth campaigning for.

That puts the United States 28 per cent of the way to electing its chief executive in the normal manner, the manner in which every governor, senator, Congressperson, legislator, mayor, and dogcatcher is elected already.

Note: this is assuming that the referee doesn’t call a foul—the referee being Congress, which has the power to disapprove D.C. laws within 30 legislative days. But that has happened only four times in the 37 years since the District got home rule, and never recently. It didn’t happen to the capital’s marriage equality law, passed last January, so it probably won’t happen to this one.