Democrats now have a path to sidestep the Electoral College after recent midterm victories. By joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states could pledge their votes to the national popular vote winner. If Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin join, they would reach the 270 electoral votes needed.
Midterm victories have created an opportunity, but obstacles like legal challenges would have to be surmounted.
Twice since 2000 -- with George W. Bush and then Donald J. Trump -- Republicans have lost the national popular vote but won the Electoral College. That has left many Democrats furious with the system.
Eliminating the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, a highly unlikely prospect in a polarized nation. But after Tuesday's midterm elections, Democrats will soon have enough power in statehouses across the country to try to circumvent it without an amendment.
Since 2007, 18 Democratic-run states and the District of Columbia have joined a legal framework that would pledge their Electoral College votes to the nationwide popular vote winner, rather than the winner in their state. The effect of the pact, if enacted and enforced, would be the same as replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote. The pledge would activate only if the states in the pact accounted for at least 270 electoral votes, the majority needed to win.
The states already in the pact represent 222 electoral votes. On Tuesday, Democrats in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin achieved a "trifecta," winning control of both chambers in their state legislatures and governor's offices. If these states all joined the pact, they would represent a total of 283 electoral votes. That would be enough for the agreement, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to go into effect:
Those states would need to pass laws to join the effort, and a trifecta does not ensure they will. In 2019, for example, the Nevada State Assembly and Senate voted to join the pact, but Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, saying it could "diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests."
All five states were swing states in the 2024 election, receiving outsize attention from the presidential campaigns -- the kind of attention that the pact's supporters say is unfairly focused on just a handful of battleground states. They say the agreement would bring the idea of "one person, one vote" to the presidential contest nationwide.