National Popular Vote Hands Control To States With Worst Election Security

Americans in every state should recognize the compact for what it is: a coastal elite power grab masquerading as democracy.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill making Virginia the latest participant in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact last week, as the compact draws perilously close to upending our constitutional order. Every American who cherishes our republic should take notice.

For years, left-leaning pundits and politicians have campaigned to scrap the Electoral College, the method the founders gave us for choosing presidents. Their vehicle is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. With Virginia’s recent entry, the compact now includes 19 jurisdictions (18 states plus the District of Columbia) controlling 222 electoral votes. That falls short of the 270 needed to trigger the scheme, but the trajectory is clear and troubling.

Virginia’s action carries special irony. This is the state of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution. Yet in April 2026 Virginia has joined an effort that effectively rewrites a core feature of the document Madison helped design.

What the Compact Would Do

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, launched in 2006, would have states ignore their own voters and instead award all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide. Proponents argue this would end the supposed unfairness of battleground-state focus and make every vote count equally.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, a reliable voice of the far left, has called the current system a threat to democracy, labeling narrow wins in key states “divisive” and “arbitrary.” Supporters promise that candidates would suddenly campaign everywhere — from California’s Central Valley to rural Maine — instead of zeroing in on a handful of swing states.

In practice, once states totaling 270 electoral votes join, every participating state would hand its electors to the national popular vote winner, no matter how its own citizens voted. It is an interstate agreement dressed up as reform.

A Constitution-Skipping Power Grab

This compact poses two serious problems — one constitutional in nature, the other rooted in the hard realities of election administration.

First, it amounts to amending the Constitution without the bother of actually amending it. The founders provided a clear, rigorous process in Article V: two-thirds of both houses of Congress (or two-thirds of the states) must propose an amendment, followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states. That deliberate hurdle has produced only 27 amendments in more than two centuries.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by contrast, could activate with the approval of a minority of state legislatures. A handful of populous, one-party states could dictate how the entire country selects its president, sidelining the majority of states and the careful federal balance the founders intended. This is not reform; it is a clever end run around the safeguards of constitutional change.

Second, the Electoral College exists for sound reasons that remain vital today. America is not a pure democracy; we are a constitutional republic. We elect representatives bound by constitutional limits precisely to guard liberty and shield minority rights from the potential tyranny of unchecked majorities.

Our system features two vital checks against concentrated power. One is the separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The other — too often forgotten — is the division of authority between the national government and the sovereign states. The Electoral College embodies that federal principle. It reminds us that the United States is a union of states, not a unitary national government in which states function as mere administrative departments.

Dangerous Disparities in Election Standards

From the republic’s earliest days, states have maintained their own sets of rules for who may vote and how ballots are cast and counted. That variation still exists — and it makes a national popular vote especially hazardous.

In California, where I served as a state assemblyman, there is effectively no meaningful verification that people registering to vote are U.S. citizens. Signing a voter registration form under penalty of perjury is treated as sufficient proof. With well more than 80 percent of ballots now cast by mail (and the figure often exceeding 90 percent in recent cycles), the system invites abuse.

Labor unions and paid ballot harvesters canvass neighborhoods aggressively. First-time in-person voters may show something as weak as a utility bill; many never show ID at all. And, if a voter always votes by mail, he may never show anyone any ID at all — ever.

By comparison, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states “have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls.” Of those, 23 states require photo ID — providing a basic safeguard against fraud that California and most compact states pointedly avoid.

It is no coincidence that nearly every jurisdiction that has joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact maintains weak or nonexistent voter ID rules. Implementing the compact would likely spark a race to the bottom, with states loosening standards further to inflate their share of the national tally. The goal, one suspects, is not cleaner elections but raw political advantage through maximized turnout — eligible or otherwise.

The Electoral College is a deliberate constitutional feature that forces presidential candidates to build broad geographic coalitions, respects state sovereignty, and protects against the dominance of a few heavily populated regions. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact seeks to discard that safeguard — not through open constitutional debate and amendment, but through a backdoor maneuver that bypasses the American people and the states that never consented.

Virginians, in particular, should reflect on their state’s proud heritage as the cradle of constitutional thought. Americans in every state should recognize the compact for what it is: a coastal elite power grab masquerading as democracy. Our constitutional republic deserves far better.