Virginia signs national popular vote bill into law, joining interstate compact with 17 other states and District of Columbia
A national majority vote for president is one step closer to reality after the Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed the national popular vote bill into law, joining an interstate compact with 17 other states and the District of Columbia.
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state. The compact takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes – 270 of 538 – pass the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest. With Virginia, the compact now has 222 electors.
Every state that has so far enacted the compact has Democratic electoral majorities, including California, New York and Illinois. But legislation has been introduced in enough states to reach the 270-elector threshold, including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
You’re a touch off. If the state passes a law backing the compact, it is now law in their state. The feds don’t have much of a say unless they make a case for discrimination. It’s true the other states have no power to enforce it, but they don’t have to. Someone from an offending state can sue their state for ignoring a law they passed. And there would be no shortage of such someones.
Unless they strongly protect the compact (such as putting it in the state constitution) they can just as easily repeal it. And honestly it would be downright negligent to not add an escape hatch.
I’d also expect a bunch of lawsuits the first time a candidate wins a state but the compact flips the result.
Of course they can change the law. But if they don’t do it before the election, the change would be legally dubious at best.
I don’t expect there to be lawsuits from the compact “flipping results” as you put it, partly because that’s entirely the wrong framing for how it works but mostly because all those lawsuits would be gotten out of the way when the laws first come into effect. The reason flipping a state’s results is the wrong framing is simple, the compact only comes into effect when there are enough electoral college votes participating to be able decide the election on their own. At that point it is meaningless to say someone “won” any individual state, because the only number that matters is the national vote.