National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
not yet active agreement between some states of the United States of America to allocate their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote
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, regardless of which ticket won more votes in their individual state/district. Introduced in 2006, 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.
It has been joined by eighteen states and the District of Columbia as of September 2026. They have 222 electoral votes, which is 41% of the Electoral College and 82% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force. The idea gained traction amongst scholars after George W. Bush won the presidential election but lost the popular vote in 2000, the first time the winner of the presidency had lost the popular vote since 1888.
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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” as not yet active agreement between some states of the United States of America to allocate their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as not yet active agreement between some states of the United States of America to allocate their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1015482. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2026, 2000 and 1888.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.