How the Electoral College Dies

By Inez Feltscher Stepman

Friday, November 13, 2026

 

In the wake of the 2026 midterms, we are on the cusp of a total transformation of the U.S. election system. After decades of Republican dominance in state legislatures, Democrats now control enough state governments to push the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact past its 270-vote activation threshold and dismantle the Electoral College from below.

 

But it seems like the right has barely realized the importance of the fight that’s about to begin.

 

Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all gained Democratic trifectas in this election (in addition, both houses in New Hampshire flipped blue, although the state retains its Republican governor). Formerly red states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas have divided chambers.

 

For decades, activists in blue states have exploited a clever loophole scheme to eliminate the constitutional framework of the Electoral College. According to proponents, if state legislatures control their electors to that body, the state can choose to pledge them to the national popular vote winner, regardless of which candidate that state’s voters support in that election. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., virtually all solidly blue — and crucially representing 222 Electoral College votes — have signed on. Virginia is the latest entrant to the compact after Democratic victories there last year. To mitigate fears of throwing Democratic state electoral votes to Republican candidates in the interim, the compact includes a clause triggering its existence only if enough states sign on to reach the 270-elector majority necessary for victory.

 

If all new Democratic trifecta states pass the compact, they would claim 71 electoral votes, without needing a single divided state — activists only need states representing a mere 48 electors to activate the compact. If not stopped in the courts, they could use this to destroy the Electoral College system and fundamentally transform elections in the United States.

 

It’s also far from clear if courts will save us from this end run around the constitutional system. The most prominent challenge was brought in 2019 in Washington State, a compact state. Opponents argued that interstate compacts of this kind needed to go through the Article I, Section 10 process and seek congressional approval; that the compact exceeds state authority even over their own electors; that it diluted the vote of Washington voters; and that it violates the equal-protection and privileges-and-immunities rights of all American voters. But because the compact hadn’t been activated, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds without the court examining any of these claims, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal without elucidating further.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court, in cases dating all the way back to the 19th century, has repeatedly ruled that state legislatures have a lot of power over their electors. As recently as 2020, the highest court again confirmed that states have the authority to enforce elector candidate pledges. While there is a strong argument that this — eviscerating the functionality of the Electoral College — is one thing state legislatures can’t do without violating the Constitution, it isn’t an ironclad one.

 

The danger is compounded by the astonishingly poor civic education the last several generations of Americans have received.

 

American voters, even those who are Republican or the independents who decided the midterms in red or purple states, aren’t familiar with the Founders’ arguments for our Electoral College system and think a national popular vote sounds pretty good. Pew Research has a long-term poll on the concept, which as recently as 2024 had a solid majority of 63 percent of voters in favor of the national popular vote. Even among Republican voters, support for the Electoral College barely ekes out a win, with 53 percent in favor and 46 percent against.

 

Despite growing interest in the plan, some of the most popular arguments of proponents have shown themselves obviously false in recent years. The idea that a particular set of swing states would occupy permanent outsize influence in the election process, for example, is no longer a viable claim. Just ten or 15 years ago, everyone “knew” that Ohio and Florida were the critical states that delivered the presidency. Blue tsunami and bad candidates in Ohio aside, both those states are solid red now. But several previously solid Republican states, like Arizona and Georgia, have been in play for several elections. A national popular vote would move the locus of elections to a handful of massive, deep-blue cities — a fact of our politics that’s far less likely to change in a decade or two than which states become toss-ups.

 

Of more immediate political impact are the potential consequences on election integrity if we moved to a national popular vote. Currently, the U.S. election system is difficult to rig at the national level, because the potential riggers would have to know where to put those votes distributed among several swing states. Mass-registering the homeless in Los Angeles, for example, may affect local elections, but as far as national ones, all it does is make California bluer. A national popular vote would reward with influence, and thus incentivize, any state that encourages the maximum number of votes, whether it’s by legalizing non-citizen voting or stuffing ballot boxes. It would set off a registration arms race and punish, with less influence over national elections, any state that tried to put in place anti-fraud protections.

 

As a matter of pure partisanship, the Electoral College has delivered the presidency to two candidates who lost the popular vote in the last century: George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald J. Trump in 2016. Democrats have every incentive to push for the evisceration of the system our Founders wisely crafted in the Constitution and award themselves something much closer to a permanent majority. And thanks to this wave election, they have the states and means to do so.