National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Status as of June 2023: 0 270 538 Each square in the cartogram represents one electoral vote.   Enacted – 205 EVs (38.1% of Electoral College)   Pending – 74 EVs (13.8%)   Neither enacted nor pending – 259 EVs (48.1%) | Threshold for activation – 270 EVs (50%+1)
Drafted	January 2006
Effective	Not in effect
Condition	Adoption by states (and D.C.) whose electoral votes comprise a majority in the Electoral College. The agreement would then be in effect only among them.
Signatories	List  Maryland  New Jersey  Illinois  Hawaii  Washington  Massachusetts  District of Columbia  Vermont  California  Rhode Island  New York  Connecticut  Colorado  Delaware  New Mexico  Oregon  Minnesota
Full text
Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote at Wikisource

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome. Introduced in 2006, as of June 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.

Certain legal questions may affect implementation of the compact. Some legal observers believe states have plenary power to appoint electors as prescribed by the compact; others believe that the compact will require congressional consent under the Constitution's Compact Clause or that the presidential election process cannot be altered except by a constitutional amendment.

Mechanism

Taking the form of an interstate compact, the agreement would go into effect among participating states only after they collectively represent an absolute majority of votes (currently at least 270) in the Electoral College. Once in effect, in each presidential election the participating states would award all of their electoral votes to the candidate with the largest national popular vote total across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. As a result, that candidate would win the presidency by securing a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Until the compact's conditions are met, all states award electoral votes in their current manner.

The compact would modify the way participating states implement Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which requires each state legislature to define a method to appoint its electors to vote in the Electoral College. The Constitution does not mandate any particular legislative scheme for selecting electors, and instead vests state legislatures with the exclusive power to choose how to allocate their states' electors (although systems that violate the 14th Amendment, which mandates equal protection of the law and prohibits racial discrimination, are prohibited). States have chosen various methods of allocation over the years, with regular changes in the nation's early decades. Today, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) award all their electoral votes to the single candidate with the most votes statewide (the so-called "winner-take-all" system). Maine and Nebraska currently award one electoral vote to the winner in each congressional district and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner.

The compact would no longer be in effect should the total number of electoral votes held by the participating states fall below the threshold required, which could occur due to withdrawal of one or more states, changes due to the decennial congressional re-apportionment or an increase in the size of Congress, for example by admittance of a 51st state. The compact mandates a July 20 deadline in presidential election years, six months before Inauguration Day, to determine whether the agreement is in effect for that particular election. Any withdrawal by a participating state after that deadline will not become effective until the next President is confirmed.

Motivation

See also: United States Electoral College § Contemporary issues, and United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote

Reasons given for the compact include:

(1) State winner-take-all laws encourage candidates to focus disproportionately on a limited set of swing states (and in the case of Maine and Nebraska, swing districts), as small changes in the popular vote in those areas produce large changes in the electoral college vote.

For example, in the 2016 election, a shift of 2,736 votes (or less than 0.4% of all votes cast) toward Donald Trump in New Hampshire would have produced a four electoral vote gain for his campaign. A similar shift in any other state would have produced no change in the electoral vote, thus encouraging the campaign to focus on New Hampshire above other states. A study by FairVote reported that the 2004 candidates devoted three-quarters of their peak season campaign resources to just five states, while the other 45 states received very little attention. The report also stated that 18 states received no candidate visits and no TV advertising. This means that swing state issues receive more attention, while issues important to other states are largely ignored.

(2) State winner-take-all laws tend to decrease voter turnout in states without close races. Voters living outside the swing states have a greater certainty of which candidate is likely to win their state. This knowledge of the probable outcome decreases their incentive to vote. A report by The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that turnout among eligible voters under age 30 was 64.4% in the ten closest battleground states and only 47.6% in the rest of the country – a 17% gap.

Elections in which the popular vote winner lost

Election	Election winner				Popular vote winner				Difference		Turnout
1824		J. Q. Adams	30.9%	113,122		Jackson	41.4%	157,271	10.5%	44,149	26.9%
1876		Hayes	47.9%	4,034,311		Tilden	50.9%	4,288,546	3.0%	254,235	82.6%
1888		Harrison	47.8%	5,443,892		Cleveland	48.6%	5,534,488	0.8%	90,596	80.5%
2000		G. W. Bush	47.9%	50,456,002		Gore	48.4%	50,999,897	0.5%	543,895	54.2%
2016		Trump	46.1%	62,984,828		H. Clinton	48.2%	65,853,514	2.1%	2,868,686	60.1%

(3) The current Electoral College system allows a candidate to win the Presidency while losing the popular vote, an outcome seen as counter to the one person, one vote principle of democracy.

This happened in the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. (The 1960 election is also a disputed example.) In the 2000 election, for instance, Al Gore won 543,895 more votes nationally than George W. Bush, but Bush secured five more electors than Gore, in part due to a narrow Bush victory in Florida; in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won 2,868,691 more votes nationally than Donald Trump, but Trump secured 77 more electors than Clinton, in part due to narrow Trump victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (a cumulative 77,744 votes).

Whether these splits suggest an advantage for one major party or the other in the Electoral College is discussed in § Suggested partisan advantage below.

Debate over effects

The project has been supported by editorials in newspapers, including The New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, arguing that the existing system discourages voter turnout and leaves emphasis on only a few states and a few issues, while a popular election would equalize voting power. Others have argued against it, including the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, called the project an "urban power grab" that would shift politics entirely to urban issues in high population states and allow lower caliber candidates to run. A collection of readings pro and con has been assembled by the League of Women Voters. Some of the most common points of debate are detailed below:

Protective function of the Electoral College

In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton argued while the delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention concluded that "the sense of the people should operate in the choice" of the election of the President, Hamilton also argued that "It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice." However, the Electoral College has never served such a role in practice. From 1796 onward, presidential electors have acted as "rubber stamps" for their parties' nominees. As of 2020, no election outcome has been determined by an elector deviating from the will of their state. Journalist and commentator Peter Beinart has cited the election of Donald Trump, who some, he notes, view as unfit, as evidence that the Electoral College does not perform a protective function.

Furthermore, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws to prevent such "faithless electors", and such laws were upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2020 in Chiafalo v. Washington. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact does not eliminate the Electoral College or affect faithless elector laws; it merely changes how electors are pledged by the participating states. In Chiafalo v. Washington, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot adopt conditions for the appointment of presidential electors that effectively create new qualifications for presidential candidates because such conditions could conflict with the Presidential Qualifications Clause of Article II, Section I. In debating the federal impeachment process at the Convention, Virginia Delegate George Mason proposed including maladministration as an impeachable offense, but withdrew the proposal following objections from fellow Virginia Delegate James Madison and Pennsylvania Delegate Gouverneur Morris who argued that the term "maladministration" was so vague that it would effectively have the President serve at the pleasure of the Senate and that regular elections of the President every four years would prevent maladministration.

Continuity of government and peaceful transitions of power

In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton argued that one concern that led the Constitutional Convention to create the Electoral College was to ensure peaceful transitions of power and continuity of government during transitions between presidential administrations, stating:

It was … peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible [in the election of the President] to tumult and disorder. ... [The] precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of Electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community, with any extraordinary or violent movements… [As] the Electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated [to] them [by] the People, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place. ...
Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves. ... This advantage will ... be secured, by making his re-election to depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice.

While recognizing that the question had not been presented in the case, the Supreme Court in Chiafalo v. Washington stated that "nothing in this opinion should be taken to permit the States to bind electors to a deceased candidate" after noting that more than one-third of the cumulative faithless elector votes in U.S. presidential elections history were cast during the 1872 presidential election when Liberal Republican and Democratic Party nominee Horace Greeley died after the polls were held and vote tabulations were completed by the states but before the Electoral College cast its ballots, and acknowledging the petitioners concern about the potential turmoil that the death of a presidential candidate between Election Day and the Electoral College meetings could cause. In the 1872 election, Greeley had carried the popular vote in 6 states and had 66 electoral votes pledged to him, but after his death on November 29, 1872, 63 of the electors pledged to him voted faithlessly while 3 votes that remained pledged to him were rejected at the Electoral College vote count on February 12, 1873 on the grounds that he had died.

Ratified in 1804, the 12th Amendment requires presidential electors to meet and cast their ballots for President and Vice President within their respective states, to create signed and certified lists of their state's electoral vote counts, and to transmit the certificates to the President of the Senate, and then, in a joint session of Congress, the President of the Senate is required to open all of the certificates and the certificates are required to be counted. After the constitutional crisis that followed the 1876 presidential election, and the narrow margins in the 1880 and 1884 presidential elections, the 49th United States Congress passed the Electoral Count Act (ECA) in 1887. Later codified in Title 3 of the United States Code, the ECA established the Electoral College safe harbor deadline, gubernatorial certificates of ascertainment and certificates of vote, the procedure of the Electoral College vote count, and the role of the Vice President at the Electoral College vote count. Section 1 of Title 3 schedules Election Day for presidential electors as the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November (November 2–8). Section 7 of Title 3 schedules the Electoral College meetings on the Monday after the second Wednesday of December (December 13–19).

Section 6 of Title 3 requires that six duplicates of the certificate of ascertainment of each state be submitted to the electors of each state by the Electoral College meeting, while Section 5 of Title 3 sets the safe harbor deadline for resolution of any disputes affecting the certificate of ascertainment as 6 days prior to the Electoral College meeting (December 7–13). Section 12 of Title 3 sets the certificate of vote submission deadline as the fourth Wednesday of December (December 22–28). Section 15 of Title 3 schedules the congressional joint session for the Electoral College vote count on January 6. Ratified in 1933, Section 3 of the 20th Amendment requires that if a President-elect dies before Inauguration Day (which Section 1 of the 20th Amendment changed to January 20) that the Vice President-elect becomes the President, while if a President-elect is not chosen or fails to qualify that the Vice President-elect acts as President until a President has qualified. If neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect has qualified, Congress is delegated the power to pass legislation to specify what occurs under such circumstances, to declare who will act as President, or to create a selection process by which an acting President is chosen until a President or Vice President has qualified.

However, Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar has noted that the explicit text of the 20th Amendment does not specify when the candidates of the winning presidential ticket officially become the President-elect and Vice President-elect, and that the text of Article II, Section I and the 12th Amendment suggests that candidates for President and Vice President are only formally elected upon the Electoral College vote count. In 2009, the Continuity of Government Commission issued a report that noted that the 80th United States Congress included "failure to qualify" as a condition for presidential succession under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and concluded that if both the President-elect and Vice President-elect have died that Congress is likewise authorized to act under Section 3 of the 20th Amendment. Following the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election during the presidential transition of Joe Biden and the January 6 United States Capitol attack during the 2021 Electoral College vote count, the ECA and the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 were amended by the 117th United States Congress under the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 that was included as Division P of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.

Foreign interference and domestic intrigue

See also: Direct democracy, Electoral integrity, Foreign electoral interventions in the United States, Political legitimacy, and Representative democracy

In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton also argued that the Electoral College would prevent foreign interference and domestic intrigue in presidential elections, stating "Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue … corruption … [and] the desire in foreign powers to ... rais[e] a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union", but that the Constitutional Convention had guarded against this by "[not making] the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men... but … [referring] it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment". By not permitting members of Congress or any other officer of the United States to serve as electors, Hamilton argued that the Constitutional Convention had also safeguarded the election of the President from anyone "who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from sinister bias."

Willamette University College of Law professor Norman R. Williams has argued that the Constitutional Convention delegates chose the Electoral College to choose the President largely in reaction to the experience during the Confederation period where state governors were often chosen by state legislatures and wanting the new federal government to have an executive branch that was effectively independent of the legislative branch. In July 2019, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released the first volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election which detailed the Committee's findings on Russian interference against U.S. elections infrastructure. While intelligence the Committee reviewed found that all 50 states probably had been targeted for scanning operations by Russian cyber actors to identify vulnerabilities in elections infrastructure, the Committee found no evidence that vote tallying procedures had been compromised or that any voting machines had been manipulated (finding the conclusions of the declassified January 2017 Intelligence Community assessment on the interference credible).

While the Committee found that voter registration databases in 2 states were accessed and saw some voter registration data exfiltrated before detection, the Committee found no evidence that any voter registration data had been modified or deleted. In testimony before the Committee, multiple U.S. Intelligence Community officials stated that multiple checks and redundancies within U.S. elections infrastructure and the decentralized nature of the elections system is beneficial to its cybersecurity and make it nearly impossible for interference with the elections infrastructure to occur without detection. Nonetheless, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson designated elections infrastructure as critical infrastructure in January 2017, and Congress appropriated $380 million to states to improve the cybersecurity of elections administration under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 following a formula created under the Help America Vote Act. While the Committee concluded that Russian cyber activities demand renewed attention to vulnerabilities in elections infrastructure, the Committee also recommended that states remain firmly at the forefront of elections administration and that the federal government should ensure that states receive the necessary resources and information related to cybersecurity threats (while a minority of the Committee members provided additional views that dissented from some of the recommendations of the first volume of the report).

Instead, like the first volume of the report issued by the Special Counsel investigation into the interference, the joint press statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2016, and the declassified Intelligence Community assessment released in January 2017, the second and fifth volumes of the Senate Intelligence Committee report released in October 2019 and August 2020 respectively concluded that the Russian interference occurred primarily by hacking-and-dumping operations targeting the internal communications of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Clinton campaign officials (specifically John Podesta) and active measures social media campaigns (particularly on Facebook and Twitter) to influence the electorate to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the general election. Subsequent Intelligence Community assessments and press statements released discussing Russian interference in the 2018 elections, the 2020 elections, and the 2022 elections have likewise concluded or stated that the interference occurred primarily by active measures social media influence campaigns rather than by cyberattacks on U.S. elections infrastructure (including by spreading disinformation about the security of the elections infrastructure itself to undermine confidence in U.S. election processes and in democracy in the United States by the American public).

Similarly, a report prepared for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee released in January 2018 detailed allegations of Russian government interference in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum including by active measures on social media, while the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament released a report in July 2020 that likewise noted that open source studies have concluded that Russian interference occurred in the referendum including by active measures on social media—which occurred in a popular referendum of the United Kingdom as a whole rather than by a vote of Parliament. While the Special Counsel investigation concluded that the evidence it found did not establish coordination or conspiracy by the Trump campaign with the Russian government, but did find substantial evidence for obstruction of justice of the Special Counsel investigation itself by Donald Trump while serving as President, the report concluded–following a 2000 Office of Legal Counsel opinion–that an incumbent President cannot be indicted for a federal crime because it would prevent the executive branch from performing its constitutionally assigned functions and because indicting an incumbent President would preempt the federal impeachment process.

Campaign focus on swing states

Advertising and visits by major-party candidates during final stretch of the 2004 presidential campaign (Sept. 26 – Nov. 2, 2004)

Spending on advertising per capita:   < $0.50   $0.50 – 1.00   $1.00 – 2.00   $2.00 – 4.00   > $4.00 Campaign visits per 1 million residents:   No visits   0 – 1.0   1.0 – 3.0   3.0 – 9.0   > 9.0

Under the current system, campaign focus – as measured by spending, visits, and attention paid to regional or state issues – is largely limited to the few swing states whose electoral outcomes are competitive, with politically "solid" states mostly ignored by the campaigns. The adjacent maps illustrate the amount spent on advertising and the number of visits to each state, relative to population, by the two major-party candidates in the last stretch of the 2004 presidential campaign. Supporters of the compact contend that a national popular vote would encourage candidates to campaign with equal effort for votes in competitive and non-competitive states alike. Critics of the compact argue that candidates would have less incentive to focus on states with smaller populations or fewer urban areas, and would thus be less motivated to address rural issues.

Disputed results and electoral fraud

Opponents of the compact have raised concerns about the handling of close or disputed outcomes. National Popular Vote contends that an election being decided based on a disputed tally is far less likely under the NPVIC, which creates one large nationwide pool of voters, than under the current system, in which the national winner may be determined by an extremely small margin in any one of the fifty-one smaller statewide tallies. However, the national popular vote can be closer than the vote tally within any one state. In the event of an exact tie in the nationwide tally, NPVIC member states will award their electors to the winner of the popular vote in their state. Under the NPVIC, each state will continue to handle disputes and statewide recounts as governed by their own laws. The NPVIC does not include any provision for a nationwide recount, though Congress has the authority to create such a provision.

Pete du Pont argues that "Mr. Gore's 540,000-vote margin [in the 2000 election] amounted to 3.1 votes in each of the country's 175,000 precincts. 'Finding' three votes per precinct in urban areas is not a difficult thing...". However, National Popular Vote contends that altering the outcome via electoral fraud would be more difficult under a national popular vote than under the current system, due to the greater number of total votes that would likely need to be changed: currently, a close election may be determined by the outcome in just one "tipping-point state", and the margin in that state is likely to be far smaller than the nationwide margin, due to the smaller pool of voters at the state level, and the fact that several states may have close results.

Suggested partisan advantage

Historical partisan advantage in the Electoral College, computed as the difference between popular vote margins nationally and in the tipping-point state(s). Positive values indicate a Republican advantage and negative values indicate a Democratic advantage.

Some supporters and opponents of the NPVIC believe it gives one party an advantage relative to the current Electoral College system. Former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont, a Republican, has argued that the compact would be an "urban power grab" and benefit Democrats. However, Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, wrote that Republicans "need" the compact, citing what he believes to be the center-right nature of the American electorate.

A statistical analysis by FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver of all presidential elections from 1864 to 2016 (see adjacent chart) found that the Electoral College has not consistently favored one major party or the other, and that any advantage in the Electoral College does not tend to last long, noting that "there's almost no correlation between which party has the Electoral College advantage in one election and which has it four years later." Although in all four elections since 1876 in which the winner lost the popular vote, the Republican became president, Silver's analysis shows that such splits are about equally likely to favor either major party. A popular vote-Electoral College split favoring the Democrat John Kerry nearly occurred in 2004.

New Yorker essayist Hendrik Hertzberg also concluded that the NPVIC would benefit neither party, noting that historically both Republicans and Democrats have been successful in winning the popular vote in presidential elections.

State power relative to population

State population per electoral vote from the 2020 census

There is some debate over whether the Electoral College favors small- or large-population states. Those who argue that the College favors low-population states point out that such states have proportionally more electoral votes relative to their populations. In the least-populous states, with three electors, this results in voters having 143% greater voting power than they would under purely proportional allocation, while in the most populous state, California, voters' power is 16% smaller than under proportional allocation. In contrast, the NPVIC would give equal weight to each voter's ballot, regardless of what state they live in. Others, however, believe that since most states award electoral votes on a winner-takes-all system (the "unit rule"), the potential of populous states to shift greater numbers of electoral votes gives them more clout than would be expected from their electoral vote count alone.

Opponents of a national popular vote contend that the Electoral College is a fundamental component of the federal system established by the Constitutional Convention. Specifically, the Connecticut Compromise established a bicameral legislature – with proportional representation of the states in the House of Representatives and equal representation of the states in the Senate – as a compromise between less populous states fearful of having their interests dominated and voices drowned out by larger states, and larger states which viewed anything other than proportional representation as an affront to principles of democratic representation. The ratio of the populations of the most and least populous states is far greater currently (68.50 as of the 2020 census) than when the Connecticut Compromise was adopted (7.35 as of the 1790 census), exaggerating the non-proportional component of the compromise allocation.

Irrelevance of state-level majorities

Three governors who have vetoed NPVIC legislation—Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Linda Lingle of Hawaii, and Steve Sisolak of Nevada—objected to the compact on the grounds that it could require their states' electoral votes to be awarded to a candidate who did not win a majority in their state. (California and Hawaii have since enacted laws joining the compact.) Supporters of the compact counter that under a national popular vote system, state-level majorities are irrelevant; in all states, votes contribute to the nationwide tally, which determines the winner. Individual votes combine to directly determine the outcome, while the intermediary measure of state-level majorities is rendered obsolete.

Proliferation of candidates

Some opponents of the compact contend that it would lead to a proliferation of third-party candidates, such that an election could be won with a plurality of as little as 15% of the vote. However, evidence from U.S. gubernatorial and other races in which a plurality results in a win do not bear out this suggestion. In the 975 general elections for Governor in the U.S. between 1948 and 2011, 90% of winners received more than 50% of the vote, 99% received more than 40%, and all received more than 35%. Duverger's law supports the contention that plurality elections do not generally create a proliferation of minor candidacies with significant vote shares.

State voting law differences

Each state sets its own rules for voting, including registration deadlines, voter ID laws, poll closing times, conditions for early and absentee voting, and disenfranchisement of felons. Parties in power have an incentive to create state rules meant to skew the relative turnout for each party in their favor. Under NPVIC, this incentive may be less than in the current system, as the awarding of electoral votes will no longer be determined solely by the votes cast within a given state. Under the compact, however, there may be an incentive for states to create rules that increase their total turnout, and thus their impact on the nationwide vote totals. In either system, the voting rules of each state have the potential to affect the election outcome for the rest of the country.

Constitutionality

Compact Clause

The Compact Clause of Article I, Section X of the United States Constitution states that "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State". In a report released in October 2019, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) cited the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee (1893) as stating that the words "agreement" and "compact" are synonyms, and that explicit congressional consent of interstate compacts is not required for agreements "which the United States can have no possible objection or have any interest in interfering with". However, the Court required explicit congressional consent for interstate compacts that are "directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States"—meaning where the vertical balance of power between the federal government and the compacting state governments is altered in favor of the compacting state governments—which the Court reaffirmed in New Hampshire v. Maine (1976), U.S. Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Commission (1978), Cuyler v. Adams (1981), and Northeast Bancorp v. Federal Reserve Board of Governors (1985).

The CRS report states that "Whether the NPV initiative requires congressional consent under the Compact Clause first requires a determination as to whether NPV even constitutes an interstate compact." Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, one of the compact's framers, has argued that because the NPVIC does not create a "new interstate governmental apparatus" and because "cooperating states acting together would be exercising no more power than they are entitled to wield individually", the NPVIC probably does not constitute an interstate compact and cannot contravene the Compact Clause. Conversely, the CRS report cites the Court's opinion in Northeast Bancorp as suggesting that a requirement of a new interstate governmental entity is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for an agreement to qualify as being an interstate compact under the Compact Clause. Instead, the CRS report cites the Court's opinions in Virginia v. Tennessee and Northeast Bancorp as stating that any agreement between two or more states that "cover[s] all stipulations affecting the conduct or claims of the parties", prohibits members from "modify[ing] or repeal[ing] [the agreement] unilaterally", and requires "'reciprocation' of mutual obligations" constitutes an interstate compact. Noting that the NPVIC meets all of those requirements, the CRS report concludes that "the initiative can be described as an interstate compact."

Vertical and horizontal balance of power shifts

As part of concerns about whether the NPVIC would shift power from the federal government to state governments, at least two legal observers have suggested that the NPVIC would require explicit congressional approval because it would remove the possibility of contingent elections for President being conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives under the 12th and 20th Amendments. The CRS report notes that the outcomes of only two presidential elections (1800 and 1824) have been decided by a contingent election, and whether the loss of such elections would be a de minimis diminishment of federal power is unresolved by the relevant case law. The report references Multistate Tax Commission as stating that the "pertinent inquiry [with respect to the Compact Clause] is one of potential, rather than actual, impact on federal supremacy" in that the potential erosion of an enumerated power of the U.S. House of Representatives could arguably require explicit congressional approval. Proponents of the compact counter that if removing the possibility of contingent elections is grounds for unconstitutionality, then Congress setting the size of the House at an odd number, as it did in 1911 (resulting in an odd number of electors until 1961), was also unconstitutional because it precluded the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College between presidential candidates.

The CRS report goes on to cite the Supreme Court's rulings in Florida v. Georgia (1855) and in Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado (2018) as recognizing that explicit congressional consent is also required for interstate compacts that alter the horizontal balance of power among the compacting states, and notes that the Court recognized in Multistate Tax Commission and Northeast Bancorp that the Compact Clause is also concerned with preserving the horizontal balance of power between compacting and non-compacting states. University of Colorado Law School professor Jennifer S. Hendricks and labor lawyer Bradley T. Turflinger have argued that the NPVIC would not alter the power of non-compacting state governments because all state governments would retain their right to select the electors of their choosing. Other legal observers have argued that the power of non-compacting states would be altered because, under the NPVIC, a state's power in determining the outcomes of presidential elections would be changed from the percentage of electors it has in the Electoral College to the state's percentage of the popular vote, rendering the right of non-compacting state governments to appoint their own electors pro forma as the Electoral College outcome would be decided ex ante rather than ex post.

Congressional approval and the Supremacy Clause

Ian J. Drake, an associate professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, has argued that because Cuyler v. Adams held that congressional approval of interstate compacts makes them federal laws, Congress can only approve interstate compacts without violating the Supremacy Clause of Article VI if it has the enumerated or implied powers to create such laws itself. Drake argues that Congress cannot consent to the NPVIC because Congress has no legislative power to alter the Electoral College under Article I, Section VIII, and citing the Supreme Court's ruling in McPherson v. Blacker (1892), Drake notes that Article II, Section I neither enumerates nor implies any powers to or of Congress to create laws stipulating the mode of appointment by which states appoint their presidential electors and only states that Congress may "determine the Time of [choosing] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes". The CRS report also notes that the Constitution provides the federal government no authority in determining the members of the Electoral College.

Conversely, a March 2001 report issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO) noted that the Supreme Court in Burroughs v. United States (1934) ruled that the authority of Congress to regulate presidential elections is not limited to determining the time by which states must choose their presidential electors and the date by which presidential electors must vote in upholding the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, because that law "[n]either in purpose nor in effect … interfere[d] with the power of a state to appoint electors or the manner in which their appointment shall be made" and that regulating the operations of national political committees was "if not beyond the power of [a] state to deal with at all, are beyond its power to deal with adequately". In light of the federal functions that presidential electors serve, the Court concluded that "To say that Congress is without power to pass appropriate legislation to safeguard [presidential elections] from the improper use of money to influence the result is to deny to the nation in a vital particular the power of self-protection. Congress, undoubtedly, possesses that power, as it possesses every other power essential to preserve the departments and institutions of the general government from impairment or destruction, whether threatened by force or by corruption."

Ian J. Drake and at least five other legal observers have argued that to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote may only be done by a constitutional amendment as outlined in Article V. The organizers of NPV Inc. dispute that a constitutional amendment is necessary for altering the current method of electing the President because the NPVIC would not abolish the Electoral College, and because states would only be using the plenary power to choose the method by which they appoint their electors that is already delegated to them under the Elections Clause of Article II, Section I. Nonetheless, the NPV Inc. organizers have stated that they plan to seek congressional approval if the compact is approved by a sufficient number of states. The CRS report notes that while the "functional view of the Compact Clause" established in Virginia v. Tennessee that interstate compacts "will not be invalidated for lack of congressional consent" was upheld by the Supreme Court in New Hampshire v. Maine, U.S. Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Commission, Cuyler v. Adams, and Northeast Bancorp, the CRS report cites Cuyler v. Adams, along with St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Co. v. James (1896) and Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Commission (1959), as establishing that the consent power of Congress is absolute and that Congress can require or deny consent to any interstate compact if it so chooses (and possibly even if the compact does not require explicit consent).

Citing Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority v. Citizens for Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc. (1991) as stating that if an enumerated power under the Constitution is legislative, then "Congress must exercise it in conformity with the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I, Section VII", and noting that the Republican River Compact was initially vetoed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, the CRS report states that if an interstate compact requires explicit congressional approval, it must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President in order to become law. Correspondingly, Ian J. Drake argues that approval of the NPVIC by Congress would meet none of the non-justiciability requirements specified by the Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962) to constitute a political question, and the CRS report concludes in agreement with Drake that if the NPVIC were to be enacted by the necessary number of states, it would likely become the source of considerable litigation, and it is likely that the Supreme Court will be involved in any resolution of the constitutional issues surrounding it.

Plenary power doctrine

Not to be confused with Independent state legislature theory.

Proponents of the compact, such as law professors Akhil and Vikram Amar (the compact's original framers), as well as U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland's 8th congressional district (a former law professor), have argued that states have the plenary power to appoint electors in accordance with the national popular vote under the Elections Clause of Article II, Section I, which states that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". The CRS report, Vikram Amar, and other legal observers have also cited the Supreme Court's rulings in McPherson v. Blacker (1892) and Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015) as recognizing that states have wide discretion in selecting the method by which they appoint their electors, and the CRS report notes that the only facial limitation on a state's power to appoint presidential electors under the Elections Clause is the number of electors it is awarded and that "no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector."

However, the CRS report cites the Court's opinions in Williams v. Rhodes (1968) and Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) that struck down state laws that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment or upheld federal preemption of state laws under the 14th Amendment concerning the appointment of electors and concludes that a state's power to select the method by which its electors are appointed is not absolute. Likewise, the GAO report notes that the 15th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the 24th Amendment, and the 26th Amendment ban states from appointing presidential electors upon the basis of polls where voting rights for eligible citizens are denied or abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, failure to pay a poll tax or other tax, or age for citizens 18 years of age or older, and that Congress has the power to create laws under those amendments to enforce those voting rights protections and the 14th Amendment to enforce the Equal Protection Clause in states that appoint presidential electors upon the results of a poll.

Equal Protection Clause and the VRA

A 2008 Columbia Law Review article by Columbia Law School student David Gringer suggested that the NPVIC could potentially violate Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). However, in 2012, the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division declined to challenge California's entry into the NPVIC under Section 5 of the Act, and the October 2019 CRS report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, has rendered Section 5 currently inoperable. In response to Gringer's argument that the NPVIC would violate Section 2 of the VRA, FairVote's Rob Richie says that the NPVIC "treats all voters equally", and NPV Inc. has stated "The National Popular Vote bill manifestly would make every person's vote for President equal throughout the United States in an election to fill a single office (the Presidency). It is entirely consistent with the goal of the Voting Rights Act."

Citing the per curiam decision of Bush v. Gore (2000) as stating that state governments cannot "value one person's vote over that of another" in vote tabulation as well as the Court's opinion in Richardson v. Ramirez (1974), Willamette University College of Law professor Norman R. Williams has argued that the NPVIC would violate the Equal Protection Clause because it does not require and cannot compel uniform election laws across both compacting and non-compacting states that regulate vote tabulation, voting machinery usage, voter registration, mail-in voting, election recounts, and felony and mental disability disenfranchisement. The NPV Inc. organizers counter that the text of the 14th Amendment states that "No state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws", that there is no precedent for claims of interstate violations of the Equal Protection Clause, and that because Bush v. Gore was addressing intrastate rather than interstate non-uniformity, the NPVIC does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.

In Williams v. Rhodes, the Supreme Court held that "State laws enacted pursuant to [Article II, Section I] … to regulate the selection of presidential electors must meet the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause" in striking down an Ohio election law requiring that new political parties seeking ballot access for their candidates in a presidential election provide petitions with a number of registered voter signatures equal to at least 15 percent of all votes cast in a preceding gubernatorial election, while independent candidates were not required to do so or political parties whose candidates had received ballot access and at least 10 percent of all votes cast in the preceding gubernatorial election. In 2020, the Supreme Court issued an order dismissing Texas v. Pennsylvania on the basis that the plaintiff state (Texas) lacked standing under Article III to sue the defendant states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin) due to the plaintiff state failing to demonstrate a judicially cognizable interest in how any other state conducts its elections.

In Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), the Supreme Court held that school segregation in the District of Columbia was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment because while the 5th Amendment does not contain an equal protection clause and the 14th Amendment applies only to the states, the "concepts of equal protection and due process … are not mutually exclusive." In light of the Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that prohibited the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, the Court concluded that since public school segregation was "not reasonably related to any proper governmental objective" and that "it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government" than the states, school segregation in the District of Columbia imposed on black children "a burden that constitute[d] an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause." In so ruling, the Court established the reverse incorporation doctrine that requires equal protection under the laws of the federal government by the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment that would later be invoked in Schneider v. Rusk (1964), Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975), Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Califano v. Goldfarb (1977), Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña (1995), and United States v. Windsor (2013).

Elections administration and voter qualifications

The NPV Inc. organizers argue that Congress has the authority to create a federal recount law. The CRS report notes that in Oregon v. Mitchell the Supreme Court upheld Congress lowering the minimum voting age in presidential elections to 18 years and a minimum residency duration requirement for voter registration and a uniform rule for absentee voting in presidential elections that Congress enacted. The GAO report cites the latter holding from Oregon v. Mitchell with the Court's opinion in Burroughs v. United States as construing the authority of Congress to regulate the administration of presidential elections as being broader than stated in Article II, Section I. However, the GAO report also noted that the precise parameters of that authority is not as clearly established as it is for congressional elections because the Elections Clause of Article II, Section I is textually more limited than the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV, and also because the amount of federal legislation related to the administration of presidential elections is relatively limited and federal case law is as well by extension—although, in upholding the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), the report noted that federal appellate courts have ruled that the broad authority given to Congress to regulate the administration of congressional elections has been extended to presidential elections.

For congressional elections, the GAO report notes that the Supreme Court held in Smiley v. Holm (1932) that Congress has a general supervisory power over all aspects of the administration of congressional elections under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV where Congress "may supplement … regulations or … substitute its own" to the extent where Congress has the power to "provide a complete code for congressional elections", and that the Court extended the general supervisory power of Congress over congressional general elections to congressional primary elections in United States v. Classic (1941) under both the Elections Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section VIII. In United States v. Classic, the Supreme Court stated that "While in a loose sense, the right to vote for representatives in Congress is sometimes spoken of as a right derived from the states, … this statement is true only in the sense that the states are authorized by the Constitution, to legislate on the subject as provided by [Article I, Section II], to the extent that Congress has not restricted state action by the exercise of its powers to regulate elections under [Article I, Section IV] and its more general power under [the Necessary and Proper Clause] … 'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers [and all other powers vested in the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof].'"

In the 8–1 ruling within the four-part decision of Oregon v. Mitchell in which no majority opinions were filed, the Supreme Court held Section 202 of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 to be constitutional under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to enforce the Privileges or Immunities Clause. In one of two 5–4 rulings on Section 302 of the 1970 VRA Amendments, the Court held that where Section 302 lowered the voting age in federal elections to 18 years was constitutional under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to enforce the Equal Protection Clause. In his opinion in Oregon v. Mitchell, Associate Justice Hugo Black cited Smiley v. Holm, Burroughs v. United States, and United States v. Classic in upholding Section 302 in federal elections under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV and the Necessary and Proper Clause, and not to enforce the Equal Protection Clause as argued by Associate Justices William J. Brennan, Byron White, and Thurgood Marshall in a single opinion and William O. Douglas in a separate opinion. In less than seven months after Oregon v. Mitchell was decided in December 1970, the 26th Amendment was ratified by three-fourths of the states under Article V by July 1971, prescribing a minimum voting age in federal, state, and local elections and superseding the Oregon v. Mitchell Section 302 holdings with respect to minimum voting age as a voter qualification.

In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. (2013), the Supreme Court ruled that while a state voter registration requirement had been permissibly preempted by the NVRA under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV and that the power the Elections Clause delegates to Congress is "none other than the power to pre-empt", the Court also concluded that the same Elections Clause "empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them" per the House Electors Qualifications Clause of Article I, Section II and the 17th Amendment that require that "the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature." Considered with the text of the Elections Clause of Article II, Section I, the opinion in Oregon v. Mitchell written by Associate Justice Potter Stewart joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justice Harry Blackmun, and the opinions of Associate Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and John Marshall Harlan II in Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court concluded that the federal government is delegated no power under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV to prescribe voter qualifications in federal elections (overturning the Oregon v. Mitchell Section 302 holding that permitted Congress to do so for federal elections).

Additionally, as the GAO report noted, the Supreme Court upheld congressional authority under the Federal Corrupt Practices Act in Burroughs v. United States to regulate campaign finance in presidential elections to prevent corruption because that law did not interfere with the power of states to appoint presidential electors or choose their mode of appointment. The Congressional Research Service has noted in reports that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have held that certain federal restrictions under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) violate the Freedom of Speech Clause of the 1st Amendment, specifically those on independent expenditures, candidate self-financed contributions or expenditures (e.g. by personal loans), contributions to candidates whose opponents self-finance, aggregate contribution limits, and contributions from minors. However, the CRS noted that other categories of restrictions on campaign finance under FECA, the BCRA, and the Hatch Act have, with exceptions, generally not seen significant legal challenges or been upheld in furtherance of compelling or sufficiently important government interests in preventing quid pro quo corruption, the appearance of corruption, or political patronage.

Such restrictions include base contribution limits, restrictions on contributions from corporations or labor unions directly from general treasuries, pay-to-play contributions from federal contractors, contributions from foreign nationals, contributions made through conduits, restrictions on coordinated expenditures and contributions by political parties or other political action committees, prohibitions on conversion of contributions for candidate personal use expenditures (except child care expenditures incurred as a direct result of campaign activity), prohibitions of solicitation for contributions by members of Congress, candidates for Congress, congressional staff, or federal employees from other federal officers or employees or federal contractors, contributions made by congressional staff and other federal employees to members of Congress who are their employers, contributions as a condition of employment by members of Congress or congressional staff, solicitation of or making contributions in federal workspaces, and mandatory advertising disclaimer and financial disclosure and reporting requirements.

With respect to contributions by foreign nationals specifically, the CRS noted that the Supreme Court in 2012 affirmed the ruling of the District of Columbia U.S. District Court in Bluman v. Federal Election Commission (2011) that held (with Judges Brett Kavanaugh, Ricardo M. Urbina, and Rosemary M. Collyer presiding) that there is a compelling government interest in restricting the participation of foreign citizens in democratic self-government to prevent foreign influence on the U.S. political process, concluding "foreign citizens do not have a constitutional right to participate in, and thus may be excluded from, activities of democratic self-government." The District Court ruling cited the Supreme Court's ruling in Bernal v. Fainter (1984) that held that foreign citizens may be excluded from activities "intimately related to the process of self-government", and also cited the Supreme Court's ruling in Sugarman v. Dougall (1973) that stated that "citizenship is a permissible criterion for limiting [voting] rights" where the Supreme Court also stated that it "has never held that aliens have a constitutional right to vote ... under the Equal Protection Clause."

Symmetric federalism and the Guarantee Clause

Northwestern University Law Review published a comment written by Northwestern University School of Law student Kristin Feeley that argued that the principle of symmetric federalism in the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, Section IV that states "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" is violated by the NPVIC because "no state [may] legislate for any other state. Placing no constitutional limit on state power over electors ... creates the ... potential for [compacting] states to form a superstate and render the [non-compacting] states irrelevant in the election of the President." Additionally, Cato Institute Vice President John Samples has argued that the NPVIC would effectively eliminate the federal character of presidential elections by eliminating the states as electoral districts. Conversely, Bradley T. Turflinger, citing New York v. United States (1992), Bush v. Gore, and Fitzgerald v. Green (1890) has argued that the federal government would be in violation of the Guarantee Clause if it required congressional approval of the NPVIC because it would encroach upon state governments' sovereignty over their own legislative processes (i.e. the power of state legislatures to prescribe how presidential electors are appointed under the Elections Clause) and make state government officials (i.e. presidential electors) accountable to the federal government rather than their local electorates.

Robert Natelson, a senior fellow at the Independence Institute in constitutional jurisprudence and a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council's board of scholars, has argued that a state's power to appoint its electors cannot be absolute because otherwise states would be permitted to appoint their electors in a manner that would violate public trust (e.g. by holding an auction to sell their electoral votes to the highest bidder). Natelson goes on to argue that a state's power to select electors must also be compatible in a substantive sense with the Electoral College composition framework in the Elections Clause, and by extension, the Representatives Apportionment Clause of Article I, Section II, Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, and the 17th Amendment, that gives less populous states disproportionate weight in selecting the President. According to Natelson, the NPVIC would be incompatible with the Electoral College composition framework as stipulated by the Elections Clause as a substantive matter (as opposed to as a formal matter) because it would de facto eliminate the disproportionate weight that less populous states have in selecting the President.

The CRS report notes that while the Court's opinion in McPherson v. Blacker emphasized that the variety of state laws that existed shortly after the ratification of the Constitution indicates that state legislatures have multiple alternative "modes of choosing the electors", no state at the time of the ratification appointed their electors based on the results of the national popular vote. Citing the Court's opinion in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995) that reaffirmed the Court's ruling in Powell v. McCormack (1969) as interpreting analogous language, the CRS report and Norman R. Williams note that the Court concluded that states cannot exercise their delegated powers over the election of members of Congress under the Elections Clause of Article I, Section IV in a way that would "effect a fundamental change in the constitutional structure" and that such change "must come not by legislation adopted either by Congress or by an individual State, but rather—as have other important changes in the electoral process—through the amendment procedures set forth in Article V." The majority opinion in Thornton (written by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens) concluded that term limits for public office amount to a qualification because term limits "unquestionably restrict the ability of voters to vote for whom they wish", and noted that when term limits were applied to the Presidency, the term limits were created by a constitutional amendment (i.e. the 22nd Amendment).

Citing McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) as stating that "No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass", the concurring opinion in Thornton (written by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy who filed it separately in addition to joining with the majority) argued that while the political identities of individual states were an essential component of the federal balance of power, the political identity of the people of the United States as a whole exists dually with their identities as the people of each state, and that term limits imposed by states in congressional elections were unconstitutional because states were infringing upon the federal character of congressional elections when creating them. Citing the same excerpt from McCulloch v. Maryland, the dissenting opinion in Thornton (written by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas) argued that the people of each state retain a separate political identity when ratifying the U.S. Constitution, and disagreed with the majority opinion's conclusion that the powers of states to conduct their own congressional elections are delegated and instead agreed with the petitioners' argument that such powers are reserved under the 10th Amendment. In dicta, the dissenting opinion argued that states may establish qualifications for their own presidential electors if "those qualifications pass muster under other constitutional provisions", but that states have "no reserved power to establish qualifications for the office of President... [b]ecause ... no State may legislate for another State".

In correspondence to the majority opinion's analysis in Thornton of the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the history of state-imposed term limits and additional qualifications for members of Congress, Williams notes that the Convention explicitly rejected a proposal to elect the President by a national popular vote, and that all of the systems adopted by state legislatures to appoint electors in the wake of the ratification of the Constitution (discretionary appointment by the state legislature or state governor, popular election by electoral district, statewide winner-takes-all election) appointed electors directly or indirectly in accordance with voter sentiment within their respective states and not on the basis of votes cast outside of their states. Likewise, in correspondence to the Court's analysis of congressional elections history, Williams notes that no state has ever appointed their electors in accordance with the national popular vote—even though every state since the 1880 election has appointed its electors upon the results of a poll, which would enable the statewide vote counts to be aggregated. The CRS report and Williams also note that the Court in McPherson v. Blacker was upholding a law passed by the Michigan Legislature to appoint its electors by popular vote in electoral districts, and in contrast to the NPVIC, in accordance with voter sentiment within Michigan rather than the country as a whole.

Williams concludes that because the Court's decision in McPherson to uphold the Michigan election law followed a comparable analysis of the Constitutional Convention debates and, in the words of the Court, of the "contemporaneous practical exposition of the Constitution", the scope of states' Article II authority does not extend to allowing states to appoint presidential electors in accordance with the national popular vote. The NPV Inc. organizers counter that the Constitutional Convention also rejected proposals having electors selected by popular vote in districts and having state legislatures appoint electors directly, and argue instead that the language of Article II does not prohibit the use of any of the methods that were rejected by the Convention. Due to a lack of a precise precedent and limited case law, the CRS report concludes that whether states are allowed to appoint their electors in accordance with the national popular vote under Article II is an open question and will likely remain unresolved until a future Court ruling in a case challenging the constitutionality of the NPVIC.

Chiafalo v. Washington and Moore v. Harper

In 2013, Bloomberg Law editor Michael Brody argued that "the role of electors has yet to be defined by a court," and cited the Supreme Court ruling in Ray v. Blair (1952) as suggesting that the 12th Amendment does not require that electors must vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Brody argued that because the NPVIC binds only states and not electors, those electors could retain independent withdrawal power as faithless electors at the request of the compacting states, unless the compacting states adopt penalties or other statutes that bind the electors—which 32 states and the District of Columbia currently do.

On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the case Chiafalo v. Washington and the related case Colorado Department of State v. Baca that it is within a state's power to enforce laws that penalize faithless electors or allow for their removal and replacement. The decision reaffirmed the precedent from McPherson v. Blacker that the Elections Clause "'[conveys] the broadest power of determination' over who becomes an elector", as well as the precedent from Ray v. Blair that a state's power to appoint electors includes conditioning an elector's appointment to a pledge to vote for their nominating party's presidential nominee (i.e. the winner of the statewide popular vote). The ruling concludes that a state's power to condition elector appointments extends to binding the electors to their pledges upon pain of penalty, stating "Nothing in the Constitution expressly prohibits States from taking away presidential electors' voting discretion as Washington does." While not a ruling on the NPVIC, the ruling that states may bind their electors to the state's popular vote has been interpreted by some legal observers as a precedent that states may choose to bind their electors to the national popular vote via plenary appointment power, while other legal observers cautioned against reading the opinion too broadly.

The majority opinion written by Associate Justice Elena Kagan noted that while a state legislature's appointment power gives it far-reaching authority over its electors, "Checks on a State's power to appoint electors, or to impose conditions on an appointment, can theoretically come from anywhere in the Constitution", further noting that the states cannot select electors in a manner that would violate the Equal Protection Clause or adopt conditions for elector appointments that impose additional qualifications for presidential candidates (as the latter could conflict with the Presidential Qualifications Clause of Article II, Section I). In his concurring opinion, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas stated that the "powers related to electors reside with States to the extent that the Constitution does not remove or restrict that power"; Thomas cites Williams v. Rhodes as stating that the powers reserved to the states concerning electors cannot "be exercised in such a way as to violate express constitutional commands." In Moore v. Harper (2023), the Supreme Court held that the Elections Clauses of Article I, Section IV and Article II, Section I "[do] not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections" in rejection of independent state legislature theory (ISL), ruling that laws passed by state legislatures pursuant to the Elections Clauses are not only restrained by the federal constitution and federal law but remain subject to judicial review by state courts and the constraints of state constitutions.

History

Public support for Electoral College reform

Public opinion surveys suggest that a majority or plurality of Americans support a popular vote for President. Gallup polls dating back to 1944 showed consistent majorities of the public supporting a direct vote. A 2007 Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 72% favored replacing the Electoral College with a direct election, including 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans, and 73% of independent voters.

A November 2016 Gallup poll following the 2016 U.S. presidential election showed that Americans' support for amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote fell to 49%, with 47% opposed. Republican support for replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote dropped significantly, from 54% in 2011 to 19% in 2016, which Gallup attributed to a partisan response to the 2016 result, where the Republican candidate Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. In March 2018, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 55% of Americans supported replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, with 41% opposed, but that a partisan divide remained in that support, as 75% of self-identified Democrats supported replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, while only 32% of self-identified Republicans did. A September 2020 Gallup poll showed support for amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote rose to 61% with 38% opposed, similar to levels prior to the 2016 election, although the partisan divide continued with support from 89% of Democrats and 68% of independents, but only 23% of Republicans. An August 2022 Pew Research Center poll showed 63% support for a national popular vote versus 35% opposed, with support from 80% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans.

Proposals for constitutional amendment

Further information: Electoral College abolition amendment and United States Electoral College § Efforts to abolish or reform

The Electoral College system was established by Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution, drafted in 1787. It "has been a source of discontent for more than 200 years." Over 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the system have been introduced in Congress, making it one of the most popular topics of constitutional reform. Electoral College reform and abolition has been advocated "by a long roster of mainstream political leaders with disparate political interests and ideologies." Proponents of these proposals argued that the electoral college system does not provide for direct democratic election, affords less-populous states an advantage, and allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the most votes. Reform amendments were approved by two-thirds majorities in one branch of Congress six times in history. However, other than the 12th Amendment in 1804, none of these proposals have received the approval of two-thirds of both branches of Congress and three-fourths of the states required to amend the Constitution. The difficulty of amending the Constitution has always been the "most prominent structural obstacle" to reform efforts.

Since the 1940s, when modern scientific polling on the subject began, a majority of Americans have preferred changing the electoral college system. Between 1948 and 1979, Congress debated electoral college reform extensively, and hundreds of reform proposals were introduced in the House and Senate. During this period, Senate and House Judiciary Committees held hearings on 17 different occasions. Proposals were debated five times in the Senate and twice in the House, and approved by two-thirds majorities twice in the Senate and once in the House, but never at the same time. In the late 1960s and 1970s, over 65% of voters supported amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote, with support peaking at 80% in 1968, after Richard Nixon almost lost the popular vote while winning the Electoral College vote. A similar situation occurred again with Jimmy Carter's election in 1976; a poll taken weeks after the election found 73% support for eliminating the Electoral College by amendment. Carter himself proposed a Constitutional amendment that would include the abolition of the electoral college shortly after taking office in 1977. After a direct popular election amendment failed to pass the Senate in 1979 and prominent congressional advocates retired or were defeated in elections, electoral college reform subsided from public attention and the number of reform proposals in Congress dwindled.

Interstate compact plan

Distribution of electoral votes following the 2020 census

The 2000 US presidential election produced the first "wrong winner" since 1888, with Al Gore winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College vote to George W. Bush. This "electoral misfire" sparked new studies and proposals from scholars and activists on electoral college reform, ultimately leading to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

In 2001, "two provocative articles" were published by law professors suggesting paths to a national popular vote through state legislative action rather than constitutional amendment. The first, a paper by Northwestern University law professor Robert W. Bennett, suggested states could pressure Congress to pass a constitutional amendment by acting together to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Bennett noted that the 17th Amendment was passed only after states had enacted state-level reform measures unilaterally.

A few months later, Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar and his brother, University of California Hastings School of Law professor Vikram Amar, wrote a paper suggesting states could coordinate their efforts by passing uniform legislation under the Presidential Electors Clause and Compact Clause of the Constitution. The legislation could be structured to take effect only once enough states to control a majority of the Electoral College (270 votes) joined the compact, thereby guaranteeing that the national popular vote winner would also win the electoral college. Bennett and the Amar brothers "are generally credited as the intellectual godparents" of NPVIC.

Organization and advocacy

Building on the work of Bennett and the Amar brothers, in 2006, John Koza, a computer scientist, former elector, and "longtime critic of the Electoral College", created the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), a formal interstate compact that linked and unified individual states' pledges to commit their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. NPVIC offered "a framework for building support one state at a time as well as a legal mechanism for enforcing states' commitments after the threshold of 270 had been reached." Compacts of this type had long existed to regulate interstate issues such as water rights, ports, and nuclear waste.

Koza, who had earned "substantial wealth" by co-inventing the scratchcard, had worked on lottery compacts such as the Tri-State Lottery with an election lawyer, Barry Fadem. To promote NPVIC, Koza, Fadem, and a group of former Democratic and Republican Senators and Representatives, formed a California 501(c)(4) non-profit, National Popular Vote Inc. (NPV, Inc.). NPV, Inc. published Every Vote Equal, a detailed, "600-page tome" explaining and advocating for NPVIC, and a regular newsletter reporting on activities and encouraging readers to petition their governors and state legislators to pass NPVIC. NPV, Inc. also commissioned statewide opinion polls, organized educational seminars for legislators and "opinion makers", and hired lobbyists in almost every state seriously considering NPVIC legislation.

NPVIC was announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on February 23, 2006, with the endorsement of former US Senator Birch Bayh; Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause; Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote; and former US Representatives John Anderson and John Buchanan. NPV, Inc. announced it planned to introduce legislation in all 50 states and had already done so in Illinois. "To many observers, the NPVIC looked initially to be an implausible, long-shot approach to reform", but within months of the campaign's launch, several major newspapers including The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, published favorable editorials. Shortly after the press conference, NPVIC legislation was introduced in five additional state legislatures, "most with bipartisan support". It passed in the Colorado Senate, and in both houses of the California legislature before being vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Adoption

Further information: § Bills and referendums

In 2007, NPVIC legislation was introduced in 42 states. It was passed by at least one legislative chamber in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hawaii. Maryland became the first state to join the compact when Governor Martin O'Malley signed it into law on April 10, 2007.

NPVIC legislation has been introduced in all 50 states. As of June 2023, the NPVIC has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia; notably, no Republican governor has yet signed it into law. Together, they have 205 electoral votes, which is 38.1% of the Electoral College and 75.9% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.

In Nevada, the legislation passed both chambers in 2019, but was vetoed by Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on May 30, 2019. In Maine, the legislation also passed both chambers in 2019, but failed the additional enactment vote in the House. States where only one chamber has passed the legislation are Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Bills seeking to repeal the compact in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington have failed.

Total
electoral
votes of
adoptive
states

'06

'07

'08

'09

'10

'11

'12

'13

'14

'15

'16

'17

'18

'19

'20

'21

'22

0

45

90

135

180

225

270

MD

NJ

IL

HI

WA

MA

DC

VT

CA

RI

NY

CT

CO

DE

NM

OR

MN

← 205 (75.9% of 270)

270 electoral votes (threshold for activation)

First
legislative
introduction

Reapportionment
based on
2010 census

Reapportionment
based on
2020 census

History of state enactment of the NPVIC as of June 2023

Jurisdictions enacting law to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

No.	Jurisdiction	Date adopted	Method of adoption	Ref.	Current electoral votes (EV)
1	Maryland	April 10, 2007	Signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley		10
2	New Jersey	January 13, 2008	Signed by Gov. Jon Corzine		14
3	Illinois	April 7, 2008	Signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich		19
4	Hawaii	May 1, 2008	Legislature overrode veto of Gov. Linda Lingle		4
5	Washington	April 28, 2009	Signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire		12
6	Massachusetts	August 4, 2010	Signed by Gov. Deval Patrick		11
7	District of Columbia	December 7, 2010	Signed by Mayor Adrian Fenty		3
8	Vermont	April 22, 2011	Signed by Gov. Peter Shumlin		3
9	California	August 8, 2011	Signed by Gov. Jerry Brown		54
10	Rhode Island	July 12, 2013	Signed by Gov. Lincoln Chafee		4
11	New York	April 15, 2014	Signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo		28
12	Connecticut	May 24, 2018	Signed by Gov. Dannel Malloy		7
13	Colorado	March 15, 2019	Signed by Gov. Jared Polis		10
14	Delaware	March 28, 2019	Signed by Gov. John Carney		3
15	New Mexico	April 3, 2019	Signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham		5
16	Oregon	June 12, 2019	Signed by Gov. Kate Brown		8
17	Minnesota	May 24, 2023	Signed by Gov. Tim Walz		10
Total					205
Percentage of the 270 EVs needed					75.9%

For a detailed history of bills to adopt the compact, see § Bills and referendums.

Initiatives and referendums

In Maine, an initiative to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact began collecting signatures on April 17, 2016. It failed to collect enough signatures to appear on the ballot. In Arizona, a similar initiative began collecting signatures on December 19, 2016, but failed to collect the required 150,642 signatures by July 5, 2018. In Missouri, an initiative did not collect the required number of signatures before the deadline of May 6, 2018.

Colorado Proposition 113, a ballot measure seeking to overturn Colorado's adoption of the compact, was on the November 3, 2020 ballot; Colorado's membership was affirmed by a vote of 52.3% to 47.7% in the referendum.

Prospects

Political analyst Nate Silver noted in 2014 that all jurisdictions that had adopted the compact at that time were blue states (all of the states who have joined the compact then and since have given all of their electoral college votes to the Democratic candidate in every Presidential election since the compact's inception), and that there were not enough electoral votes from the remaining blue states to achieve the required majority. He concluded that, as swing states were unlikely to support a compact that reduces their influence, the compact could not succeed without adoption by some red states as well. Republican-led chambers have adopted the measure in New York (2011), Oklahoma (2014), and Arizona (2016), and the measure has been unanimously approved by Republican-led committees in Georgia and Missouri, prior to the 2016 election.

On March 15, 2019, Colorado became the most "purple" state to join the compact, though no Republican legislators supported the bill and Colorado had a state government trifecta under Democrats. It was later submitted to a referendum, approved by 52% of voters.

In April 2021, reapportionment following the 2020 census caused NPVIC members California, Illinois and New York to each lose one electoral vote, and Colorado and Oregon to each gain one, causing the total electoral votes represented by members to fall from 196 to 195.

Novel opposing action by North Dakota

On February 17, 2021, the North Dakota Senate passed SB 2271, "to amend and reenact sections ... relating to procedures for canvassing and counting votes for presidential electors" in a deliberate—albeit indirect—effort to stymie the efficacy of the NPVIC by prohibiting disclosure of the state's popular vote until after the Electoral College meets. Later the bill was entirely rewritten as only a statement of intent and ordering a study for future recommendations, and this version was signed into law.

Bills and referendums

Bills in latest session

The table below lists all state bills to join the NPVIC introduced in a state's current or most recent legislative session. This includes all bills that are law, pending or have failed. The "EVs" column indicates the number of electoral votes each state has.

State	EVs	Session	Bill	Latest action	Lower house	Upper house	Executive	Status	Ref.
Alaska	3	2023–24	SB 61	May 3, 2023	—	In committee	—	Pending
Arizona	11	2023	SB 1485	February 9, 2023	—	In committee	—	Pending
Florida	30	2023	HB 53	May 5, 2023	Died in committee	—	—	Failed
			SB 860	May 5, 2023	—	Died in committee	—
Maine	4	2023–24	LD 1578	June 1, 2023	In committee	In committee	—	Pending
Michigan	15	2023–24	HB 4156	June 6, 2023	Passed committee	—	—	Pending
			SB 126	March 2, 2023	—	In committee	—
Minnesota	10	2023–24	HF 1830	May 24, 2023	Passed 69–62	Passed 34–31	Signed	Law
			SF 538	February 2, 2023	—	Passed committee	—	Pending
			SF 1362	May 1, 2023	Introduced	Passed 34–33	—
Mississippi	6	2023	HB 491	January 31, 2023	Died in committee	—	—	Failed
Missouri	10	2023	HB 829	May 12, 2023	Died in committee	—	—	Failed
			HB 997	May 12, 2023	Died in committee	—	—
Nevada	6	2023	AJR 6	May 18, 2023	Passed 27–14	Passed 12–9	N/A	Pending
North Carolina	16	2023–24	HB 191	February 27, 2023	In committee	—	—	Pending
South Carolina	9	2023–24	H 3240	January 10, 2023	In committee	—	—	Pending
			H 3807	January 25, 2023	In committee	—	—
Texas	40	2023	HB 237	February 23, 2023	Died in committee	—	—	Failed
			SB 95	February 15, 2023	—	Died in committee	—
Wisconsin	10	2023–24	AB 156	April 10, 2023	In committee	—	—	Pending
			SB 144	April 26, 2023	—	In committee	—

Bills receiving floor votes in previous sessions

The table below lists past bills that received a floor vote (a vote by the full chamber) in at least one chamber of the state's legislature. Bills that failed without a floor vote are not listed. The "EVs" column indicates the number of electoral votes the state had at the time of the latest vote on the bill. This number may have changed since then due to reapportionment after the 2010 and 2020 census.

State	EVs	Session	Bill	Lower house	Upper house	Executive	Outcome	Ref.
Arizona	11	2016	HB 2456	Passed 40–16	Died in committee	—	Failed
Arkansas	6	2007	HB 1703	Passed 52–41	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2009	HB 1339	Passed 56–43	Died in committee	—	Failed
California	55	2005–06	AB 2948	Passed 48–30	Passed 23–14	Vetoed	Failed
		2007–08	SB 37	Passed 45–30	Passed 21–16	Vetoed	Failed
		2011–12	AB 459	Passed 52–15	Passed 23–15	Signed	Law
Colorado	9	2006	SB 06-223	Indefinitely postponed	Passed 20–15	—	Failed
		2007	SB 07-046	Indefinitely postponed	Passed 19–15	—	Failed
		2009	HB 09-1299	Passed 34–29	Not voted	—	Failed
		2019	SB 19-042	Passed 34–29	Passed 19–16	Signed	Law
Connecticut	7	2009	HB 6437	Passed 76–69	Not voted	—	Failed
		2018	HB 5421	Passed 77–73	Passed 21–14	Signed	Law
Delaware	3	2009–10	HB 198	Passed 23–11	Not voted	—	Failed
		2011–12	HB 55	Passed 21–19	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2019–20	SB 22	Passed 24–17	Passed 14–7	Signed	Law
District of Columbia	3	2009–10	B18-0769	Passed 11–0		Signed	Law
Hawaii	4	2007	SB 1956	Passed 35–12	Passed 19–4	Vetoed	Failed
				Override not voted	Overrode 20–5
		2008	HB 3013	Passed 36–9	Died in committee	—	Failed
			SB 2898	Passed 39–8	Passed 20–4	Vetoed	Law
				Overrode 36–3	Overrode 20–4	Overridden
Illinois	21	2007–08	HB 858	Passed 65–50	Died in committee	—	Failed
			HB 1685	Passed 64–50	Passed 37–22	Signed	Law
Louisiana	8	2012	HB 1095	Failed 29–64	—	—	Failed
Maine	4	2007–08	LD 1744	Indefinitely postponed	Passed 18–17	—	Failed
		2013–14	LD 511	Failed 60–85	Failed 17–17	—	Failed
		2017–18	LD 156	Failed 66–73	Failed 14–21	—	Failed
		2019–20	LD 816	Failed 66–76	Passed 19–16	—	Failed
				Passed 77–69	Insisted 21–14
				Enactment failed 68–79	Enacted 18–16
				Enactment failed 69–74	Insisted on enactment
Maryland	10	2007	HB 148	Passed 85–54	Passed 29–17	Signed	Law
			SB 634	Passed 84–54	Passed 29–17
Massachusetts	12	2007–08	H 4952	Passed 116–37	Passed	—	Failed
				Enacted	Enactment not voted
		2009–10	H 4156	Passed 114–35	Passed 28–10	Signed	Law
				Enacted 116–34	Enacted 28–9
Michigan	17	2007–08	HB 6610	Passed 65–36	Died in committee	—	Failed
Minnesota	10	2013–14	HF 799	Failed 62–71	—	—	Failed
		2019–20	SF 2227	Passed 73–58	Not voted	—	Failed
Montana	3	2007	SB 290	—	Failed 20–30	—	Failed
Nevada	5	2009	AB 413	Passed 27–14	Died in committee	—	Failed
	6	2019	AB 186	Passed 23–17	Passed 12–8	Vetoed	Failed
New Hampshire	4	2017–18	HB 447	Failed 132–234	—	—	Failed
New Jersey	15	2006–07	A 4225	Passed 43–32	Passed 22–13	Signed	Law
New Mexico	5	2009	HB 383	Passed 41–27	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2017	SB 42	Died in committee	Passed 26–16	—	Failed
		2019	HB 55	Passed 41–27	Passed 25–16	Signed	Law
New York	31	2009–10	S02286	Not voted	Passed	—	Failed
	29	2011–12	S04208	Not voted	Passed	—	Failed
		2013–14	A04422	Passed 100–40	Died in committee	—	Failed
			S03149	Passed 102–33	Passed 57–4	Signed	Law
North Carolina	15	2007–08	S954	Died in committee	Passed 30–18	—	Failed
North Dakota	3	2007	HB 1336	Failed 31–60	—	—	Failed
Oklahoma	7	2013–14	SB 906	Died in committee	Passed 28–18	—	Failed
Oregon	7	2009	HB 2588	Passed 39–19	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2013	HB 3077	Passed 38–21	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2015	HB 3475	Passed 37–21	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2017	HB 2927	Passed 34–23	Died in committee	—	Failed
		2019	SB 870	Passed 37–22	Passed 17–12	Signed	Law
Rhode Island	4	2008	H 7707	Passed 36–34	Passed	Vetoed	Failed
			S 2112	Passed 34–28	Passed	Vetoed	Failed
		2009	H 5569	Failed 28–45	—	—	Failed
			S 161	Died in committee	Passed	—	Failed
		2011	S 164	Died in committee	Passed	—	Failed
		2013	H 5575	Passed 41–31	Passed 32–5	Signed	Law
			S 346	Passed 48–21	Passed 32–4
Vermont	3	2007–08	S 270	Passed 77–35	Passed 22–6	Vetoed	Failed
		2009–10	S 34	Died in committee	Passed 15–10	—	Failed
		2011–12	S 31	Passed 85–44	Passed 20–10	Signed	Law
Virginia	13	2020	HB 177	Passed 51–46	Died in committee	—	Failed
Washington	11	2007–08	SB 5628	Died in committee	Passed 30–18	—	Failed
		2009–10	SB 5599	Passed 52–42	Passed 28–21	Signed	Law

Referendums

State	EVs	Year	In favor	Opposed	Ref.
Colorado	9	2020	52.33%	47.67%

See also

• Electoral reform in the United States
• Every Vote Counts Amendment
• Ranked-choice voting in the United States

References

Bundled references

Works cited

• Whitaker, L. Paige (May 17, 2023). Campaign Finance Law: An Analysis of Key Issues, Recent Developments, and Constitutional Considerations for Legislation (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
• Report on the Electoral Count Act of 1887: Proposals for Reform (PDF) (Report). United States House Committee on House Administration. 2022. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
• Keyssar, Alexander (2020). Why do we still have the electoral college?. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674974142. OCLC 1153869791.
• Neale, Thomas H. (October 22, 2020). The Electoral College: A 2020 Presidential Election Timeline (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 3, 2023.
• Whitaker, L. Paige (September 8, 2020). Political Campaign Contributions and Congress: A Legal Primer (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
• Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities (PDF) (Report). United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2023.
• Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume II of II (PDF) (Report). United States Department of Justice. June 2020b. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
• Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II (PDF) (Report). United States Department of Justice. June 2020a. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
• Neale, Thomas H.; Nolan, Andrew (October 28, 2019). The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact (Report). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved November 10, 2019.
• Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia's Use of Social Media with Additional Views (PDF) (Report). United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. October 2019b. Retrieved June 23, 2023.
• Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 1: Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure with Additional Views (PDF) (Report). United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. July 2019a. Retrieved June 21, 2023.
• Rossiter, Clinton, ed. (2003). The Federalist Papers. Signet Classics. ISBN 9780451528810.
• Gamboa, Anthony H. (March 13, 2001). Elections: The Scope of Congressional Authority in Election Administration (PDF) (Report). General Accounting Office. Retrieved June 8, 2023.

External links

• Election Law Journal Symposium on National Popular Vote
• National Popular Vote
• Text of the National Popular Vote Compact Bill
• Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote – read or download the book for free
• FairVote
• Common Cause
• Electoral College legislation at the National Conference of State Legislatures