Democrats could be one midterm wave away from instituting a national popular vote. Should they?
The Electoral College — our nation’s bizarre system that hands a few narrowly-divided states the privilege to choose our presidents — has beenentrenched for two centuries.
But a long-game effort from reformers, which has played out quietly in blue states across the country over the past 20 years, has gotten it surprisingly close to toppling.
And a blue wave in the 2026 midterms could finish the job.
The big idea is called theNational Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and it’s essentially one weird trick for moving to a popular vote system without a constitutional amendment.
How it works is that each participating state agrees that their electors will go to the candidate who wins the highest number of votes nationwide —if, and only if, enough other states agree so that the outcome will be determined that way.
To clarify: there are 538 electoral votes, and it takes 270 for a majority. So if states that have 270 or more electoral votesall agreeto award them to the national popular vote winner, then that candidate gets the 270 needed to win, and what the remaining states do with their electors no longer matters. (Theirvotersstill matter because they contribute to the national popular vote — but which candidate wins these states, or any state, is no longer important.)
Nearly every blue or leaning blue state has signed onto the compact, the most recent beingVirginialast month — and reformers now have states controlling 222 of the 270 electoral votes they need.
The decisive batch would be the core swing states wherepartisan control is up for grabsthis fall. If Democrats win governing trifectas (the governorship and both state legislative chambers) in enough of them, they could very well cobble together the remaining 48 electoral votes, and actually put this into place for 2028. Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Hampshire are the top targets.
One longtime reason to be skeptical this would happen was the assumption that swing states would never willingly agree to give up their privileged status. But the Electoral College has become such a partisan and polarized topic that narrow state interests may not count as much as they used to, in the face of the Democratic coalition’soverwhelming beliefthat a popular vote would be better — with the memory of Donald Trump’s 2016 win being a vivid example of what could happen if they don’t act.
Source: Drudge Report
