The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

The candidate with the most votes should win the presidency.

The Compact guarantees the White House to whoever receives the most popular votes across all 50 states and DC. It activates the moment participating states reach 270 electoral votes. We are 82% of the way there.

How it works

Three steps. No constitutional amendment required.

Article II of the Constitution already gives each state full authority over how it awards its electoral votes. The Compact uses that power.

01

States pass the Compact.

Each participating state passes the same model bill, pledging its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner.

02

It activates at 270.

Nothing changes for any state until participating states reach 270 electoral votes. Then it triggers automatically.

03

Most votes wins.

From the next election forward, the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide wins the presidency. Every cycle.

The Electoral College stays. State sovereignty stays. The only thing that changes is how participating states cast their votes. Read the mechanism in full →

The case

Three numbers that explain the problem.

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Of 2024 campaign events happened in just 7 states.

43 states and roughly 80% of voters were spectators to the presidential election. 19 states received zero general-election visits across the past five cycles.

See the data →
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Presidents took office without winning the popular vote.

1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016. Recent elections turned on tiny shifts: 119,000 votes in 2004, 43,000 in 2020, 240,000 in 2024.

The history →
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The relative weight of a battleground vote.

A vote in Pennsylvania is worth roughly 200 times a vote in California or Wyoming. Whether your vote affects the outcome depends almost entirely on your zip code.

Polls show 70%+ support →
Momentum

Recent wins. Active campaigns.

Three new jurisdictions in three years. The momentum is real and the path to 270 is visible.

Virginia signs.

The 19th jurisdiction. Brings the total to 222 electoral votes.

+13 EV

Maine joins.

Gov. Mills signs. The 18th jurisdiction.

+4 EV

Minnesota signs.

Gov. Walz signs. The 17th jurisdiction.

+10 EV

Three signings in three months.

Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon all enact within a single legislative session.

+26 EV

See the full 20-year timeline →

Objections, addressed

The four objections you've probably already thought of.

Each one is real and each one has a clean answer. The full library of 14 video explainers and 45 chapters lives on the myths page.

Big cities will dominate.

The 100 largest cities hold roughly 19% of Americans, about the same share as rural America. Neither block can elect a president alone. National elections force broad coalitions, not regional ones.

Small states will lose influence.

Small states are already ignored. 19 states received zero general-election visits across five cycles. Equal votes give every state a reason to be courted, not just the seven battlegrounds.

Doesn't this need a constitutional amendment?

No. Article II gives each state full authority over how its electoral votes are awarded. State winner-take-all rules are state statutes, not federal law. The Compact uses the same authority.

What about fraud and recounts?

A national vote actually dilutes the incentive to cheat. Fraud in any one state can no longer flip a single state's electors and decide an election. Recount margins scale by population, not by state.

See all 45 objections answered →