Democrats Eye National Popular Vote Compact After Statehouse Wave

Democrats are moving quickly to expand a state-based plan to award the presidency to the winner of the national popular vote after flipping a wave of statehouses this year, positioning newly won legislatures in key battlegrounds to potentially help bypass the Electoral College.^[1]

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which states pledge their electors to whoever wins the most votes nationwide once participating states reach 270 electoral votes, currently covers states totaling 222 electoral votes, leaving supporters 48 short of being able to swing future presidential outcomes.^[1] Democrats now hold unified control of state government in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, representing 71 electoral votes, and party leaders and advocates say those states will be at the center of the next push to join the compact.^[1]

In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two states that have decided the last several presidential races, Democratic governors David Crowley and Josh Shapiro have publicly signaled they are open to moving their states into the agreement, framing it as a way to ensure every vote in every state carries equal weight.^[1] Advocates argue that if enough of the new Democratic-led legislatures adopt the compact, they could collectively cross the 270-vote threshold before the 2028 election, functionally replacing the current Electoral College system without amending the Constitution.^[1]

The compact first gained traction among blue states in the mid-2000s after George W. Bush and then Donald Trump won the presidency while losing the national popular vote, but progress had largely stalled in recent years as divided governments and Republican-controlled legislatures blocked bills.^[1] This month's midterm elections reshuffled that map, flipping several presidential battlegrounds into full Democratic control and reopening a path that supporters had all but written off a decade ago.

Legal scholars caution that success in adding enough states to reach 270 electoral votes would almost certainly trigger immediate court battles over whether the compact violates the Constitution's rules for choosing presidents and for interstate agreements, a fight they expect would land at the Supreme Court.^[1] Republicans and some election-law experts are already arguing that shifting how states allocate electors on a partisan basis could deepen polarization and undermine public trust, while Democrats counter that the Electoral College already distorts campaigns by encouraging candidates to focus narrowly on a handful of swing states.

Supporters of the compact are now balancing political momentum against those legal risks, debating whether to push all six newly blue states to act at once or to move sequentially so courts can weigh in before the agreement actually decides a presidential winner.^[1] However they proceed, the new statehouse majorities have turned what long looked like an academic reform idea into a live, high-stakes question about how the country will pick its presidents in the next decade.^[1]

1. PBS News