In case you missed it, the scheme by special interest groups to replace the Electoral College with a so-called national popular vote may have just suffered a mortal blow — and it happened in a blue state, Maine.
The battle is raging between Democrats who wish to stay in the National Popular Vote compact and those defecting to the Republican minority in increasingly larger numbers. That battle isn’t over, but the fact that conservatives are making progress at all shows Democrats are abandoning the scheme altogether. Here’s why.
President Donald Trump’s popular vote win in 2024 shattered Democrats’ delusion that Republicans had become a permanent minority party. Republican legislators should act now to defeat this harmful pact that violates the principles of America’s federal democracy by reminding their Democratic colleagues of the value the Electoral College provides to American voters.
Why does it matter? Had the compact been in effect in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have become president despite winning only 20 states and visiting just 37 — infamously skipping Wisconsin altogether. Without needing swing states’ electoral votes, she might have won the popular vote by racking up Democratic votes in fewer than 10 states… and won the White House, thanks to the compact.
The compact is a backdoor strategy to bypass the Constitution without an amendment. Member states agree to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner — regardless of how their citizens vote. Once states totaling 270 electoral votes join — a majority of all electoral votes — the compact kills the Electoral College by making it irrelevant.
So far, states representing 209 electoral votes have joined the compact. If just the states that passed it through one legislative branch joined, it would give the compact 283 electoral votes — well over the threshold to override the Constitution and hand the presidency to whichever candidate wins the popular vote in 2028. That’s why it’s so urgent to start rolling the compact back immediately.
Some national popular vote supporters sincerely want to destroy state lines and our federal democracy, but the compact gained steam in blue states from raw partisan motivation.
Elites concocted the scheme after George W. Bush won the White House without the popular vote in 2000, and formed the organization National Popular Vote (NPV) in 2006, the group behind the interstate compact. It took Trump repeating Bush’s feat in 2016 — winning the White House while losing the popular vote — for Democrat elites to fear the worst: They would never cut inroads into “flyover states” and overcome what they believed was a Republican advantage in the Electoral College. This helped NPV activists convince dozens of blue states that they needed to bypass the Electoral College as a backup plan to cementing Democrat power in future elections.
The NPV lobbyists were canny enough to realize early on that there aren’t enough blue states to make the compact a success. So, they used sleazy tactics and flattery to convince Republican legislators in red states that the scheme is somehow “bipartisan.”
NPV’s hired gun, Saul Anuzis, lost the 2011 Republican National Committee (RNC) chairmanship to Reince Priebus, but that didn’t stop him from circulating a pro-NPV letter on fake RNC letterhead.
Amazingly, Anuzis later tried to convince Republicans angry with the 2020 election irregularities to blame the Electoral College instead, calling the NPV plan “a bipartisan proposal that takes a federalist approach.”
NPV tried to woo Republican legislators directly with expensive resort trips. After a free day of vacationing in Hawaii or Panama, it cynically tried to convince them that scrapping the Electoral College would improve democracy and help Republicans win elections. Many of the legislators were dumb enough to buy it, and some of the states where the compact passed only one legislative branch are so red they have Republican trifectas.
A Shield Against Political Monoculture
The Electoral College exists because states exist. It serves as a mechanism to ensure that presidents are chosen by a cross-section of states and citizens. Electing a president by popular vote would weaken the federalism on which the country was founded.
Switching to a popular vote would also remove checks and balances unique to first-world democracies like the U.K., Italy, Japan, and Germany, which do not directly elect their heads of state. Of the 38 OECD countries, only Mexico, South Korea, and the Philippines directly elect their heads of state, and each is marred by frequent bouts of corruption and political instability.
Critics argue this makes people’s votes irrelevant because candidates only focus on a handful of swing states and ignore the rest. But if the country abandoned the Electoral College, presidential candidates would focus exclusively on population centers, giving California, Texas, and New York more attention but sidelining most of the rest.
The Electoral College forces coalition-building and restrains regionalism by protecting the interests of small states and rural voters — whether black Democrats in rural Georgia or white Republicans in rural Wisconsin. It allows these voters to represent the interests of similar voters in non-swing states.
In a popular vote system, Democratic candidates would not only ignore rural voters but also the economic interests of small blue states like Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, and Delaware.
Republicans, Time to Go on Offense
NPV tried to fool Republicans into believing that scrapping American democracy is a bipartisan issue. The opposite, in fact, is true, and it’s time for Republicans in blue and purple states to make that case.
Both parties have a truly bipartisan interest in preserving the Electoral College. Small state and rural Democrats have unique interests and needs that presidential candidates beholden to large state and urban constituencies will not address.
If enough states had already joined the compact, states that Kamala Harris won would have been forced to give their electoral votes to Trump. In that scenario, Trump would have won 521–17. Most Democratic voters probably don’t want that and prefer their Electoral College chances when their candidate loses the popular vote.
There’s reason to think Democrats are now abandoning that scheme.
The Maine vote shows why. The state’s House of Representatives voted 76–71 to withdraw the state from the compact. The state’s Senate killed the bill 18–16, with one Republican abstaining and two Democrats voting with the Republican minority. This marks considerable progress considering their senate voted last year 18–12 to join. If Republicans can flip one or two seats next year, they’ll have the numbers to withdraw Maine from the compact.
Republicans in other compact member-states should follow suit. They won’t gain majorities in New Jersey, Oregon, or Washington anytime soon, but keeping the Electoral College should not be a partisan issue. Withdrawing from this elitist scheme will prevent blue states’ electors from going to a Republican popular vote winner who loses the Electoral College. Such an outcome is not inconceivable. In 2022, for instance, Republicans handily won the Senate’s national popular vote but lost the Senate.
Trump disproved the elitist hypothesis that Republicans with their flyover constituency would be unable to win the popular vote again. His victory defeated the purpose of the compact, which liberal special interests believed would provide Democrats an easier path to victory. Republican state legislators should push to withdraw from the compact while the 2024 election remains fresh on Democrats’ minds by reminding them that the Electoral College provides the best representation for diverse voters in both parties.
Jacob Grandstaff is an investigative researcher for Restoration News.
READ MORE from Jacob Grandstaff:
Trump’s Plan to Pay Illegal Aliens to Self-Deport is Brilliant