Americans have become accustomed to hearing left-wing critics describe the Constitution and the safeguards it enshrined against raw majoritarianism—such as the election of senators by state legislatures and the Electoral College—as obstacles to “progress.” Progressives finally got their way with respect to the direct popular election of senators when they passed the 17^th Amendment in 1913. Since then, however, progressives have discovered that rather than persuading their fellow citizens to amend the Constitution when they want a change,  they can simply seek to work around it. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) represents perhaps the most ambitious example of this deceptive process. It is nothing short of an effort to fundamentally transform the nature of presidential elections without changing a single word of the Constitution or seeking the broad consensus of the American people in making the change.

For generations, opponents of the Electoral College sought to abolish it constitutionally. They introduced constitutional amendments and urged Americans to institute a direct national popular vote in its place. Those efforts repeatedly failed because Article V requires overwhelming national consensus before constitutional amendments can be adopted.

Today, many on the left have embraced a different strategy. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed his state into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in 2023, and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed Virginia into the compact this year, bringing the concerted effort significantly closer to taking effect. The effort has also been championed for years by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Together, they seek to accomplish through coordinated state legislation what they have been unable to achieve through constitutional amendment or broad popular support. 

The NPVIC is not just another proposal for election reform. It is an agreement among participating states that, once states totaling 270 electoral votes have joined, each member state will award all of its electoral votes not to the candidate who wins that state’s Electoral College delegates on election night but to the winner of the national popular vote. So, for example, even if Virginia voters overwhelmingly supported the Republican candidate for president, Virginia would award their electoral votes to the Democrat if the Democrat won the popular vote across the nation. The Electoral College would technically remain in the Constitution, but it would no longer effectively function . In practice, the president would be elected by nationwide popular vote without a single word of the Constitution having been amended.

The creation of the Electoral College was not an accident. At Constitutional Convention, the framers considered direct election of the president and rejected it. The Constitution instead established a federal republic in which states, as states, play an essential role in selecting the chief executive. The idea was not that presidents should represent the interests and opinions of the majority of individual Americans, but the broad national interest. That national interest includes the interests of states that are not as densely populated.

Under Article II as things currently stand, each state appoints its own electors and determines the rules for its own elections. Under the compact, participating states agree that their electors will instead be subordinate to the vote totals compiled under the election laws of other states. Ballots counted under California’s election rules, New York’s recount procedures, or Oregon’s absentee voting laws would determine how electors are appointed in Vermont, Washington, or Minnesota. 

The Constitution gives states broad authority over how they choose their presidential electors. States may use winner-take-all elections, congressional districts, or even have their legislatures appoint electors directly. But there is an important difference between choosing how to appoint electors and changing what the Electoral College is and does. A power to operate within the Constitution is not a power to rewrite it.

There is another problem. States regularly enter into agreements with one another. They cooperate on everything from sharing water to fighting crime to responding to natural disasters. But the method for choosing the president is different. This debate is bigger than the Electoral College itself. Reasonable people can disagree over whether the Electoral College is the best system. But the Constitution already tells us that if we want to change it, there is only one way to do so: through the amendment procedure. 

The reason that process was designed to be difficult is that the Founders wanted the nation’s basic constitutional structure to change only when there was broad national agreement.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact asks Americans to accept a different path. Instead of trying to amend the Constitution, it attempts to change how the Constitution works.. Congress can take preemptive action now to stop this. Interstate compacts require congressional consent, and Congress can pass legislation that would both ensure this deceptive compact is denied and foreclose future efforts to alter constitutional structures without an amendment.

That is why the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact deserves far more scrutiny than it has received in the media. At stake is not just how Americans elect a president. At stake is whether the Constitution’s prescribed method for changing itself remains meaningful. If constitutional structures can be fundamentally altered whenever enough states agree to work around Article V, then the amendment process becomes a suggestion rather than a safeguard.