But Wait, There’s More: How a Popular Vote Deciding the President May Have Moved One Step Closer to Reality

A postscript to the 2026 midterms:

The bodies aren’t even cold, and a conversation with the Election Transparency Initiative’s Ken Cuccinelli made all of the disparate stories come together.

This, as Virginia conservatives stare at the darker blue hue that the media pundits will use to color their state boundaries with from now on, wondering where the other 50% of the registered voters went, and wondering if suggesting that you shouldn’t raise taxes could be prosecuted under the commonwealth’s new abortion rights guarantee.

Maybe the bigger question should be: Will Virginia even matter anymore?

I sat down with Cuccinelli while Alaska still had 18% of their Ranked-Choice-Voting ballots to count, and “Dan Prime” Sullivan had a 1% lead but still not enough to stave off “round two” of the count-til-we-get-the-results-we-want process began, thinking we’d discuss that.

(As of Thursday morning, Democrat Mary Peltola holds a 637-vote lead over Sen. Dan Sullivan, with the “other” Dan Sullivan recruited by Peltola’s campaign and Democratic insiders like Marc Elias to put on the ballot to confuse voters, has 3,600 votes.)

I thought we’d discuss that.

No, as if the former Virginia attorney general was still celebrating Halloween, he said the more frightening thing will be when Texas and North Carolina and Ohio join the …

NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE COMPACT!

Like Jason Voorhees, it’s reappeared, and like a new crew of college girls, we didn’t know it was behind us with an ax.

If you have never heard of the National Popular Vote Compact, the idea began formulating before the last “hanging chad” had been recounted in 2000. It used an interview clip of Karl Rove talking about how they only needed to flip one county in Ohio and one in Florida, which was at the time a blue state full of snow-bird Northeasterners, to get an Electoral College victory.

Vice President Al Gore received about 543,000 more votes than Texas Gov. George W. Bush, but only 266 electoral votes. The Electoral College nevertheless gave Bush the presidency. That’s when Democrats decided a plan that was designed by the Founders to keep “populous places like Virginia” from dominating the executive branch.

Now those “populous places” are Los Angeles, New York ad Chicago, and if the National Popular Vote Compact takes effect, the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide will receive the electoral votes of the compact’s member states. That could make Virginia even more irrelevant.

The compact is built on the same math as the presidency. If enough states join the accord to total at least 270 electoral votes, the compact takes effect. Virginia joined it in 2026, bringing the total to 222 electoral votes. Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the measure in April, making Virginia the 18th state to join, along with the District of Columbia.

Cuccinelli said, “losing states like South Carolina and Texas is pretty tough math for the near future, and near future is really the next, you know, five or 10 years. So we’ll see how everything goes. And also, this is going to radically change 2028 in several ways, including ways that nobody has thought about, such as the fact that the national popular vote will now pass. There’ll be litigation over it, and we may not have an electoral college contest in 2028.”

Once states totaling at least 270 electoral votes are committed to the compact, the winner of the national presidential popular vote would receive the electoral votes of the compact’s member states, providing the electoral-vote majority necessary to become president. The Electoral College itself would remain in existence, but in practical terms, its purpose would be negated.

They have to do it this way because to just eliminate the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment and, well … truth be told … this is easier.

Christopher Pearson, former Vermont state senator and secretary of National Popular Vote, sells the process this way:

“Under a national popular vote, every vote would be equal throughout the United States. In a national popular vote for President, a voter in a populous metro area would be no more valuable or important than a voter in a suburb, an exurb, a small town, or a rural area. Big metro areas would not receive all the attention or even a disproportionate amount of attention—much less control the outcome.”

His misrepresentation here is that messaging to large metropolitan areas is easier geographically, and if big cities supported small-government conservatism, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison: “When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”

What he was getting at is that big cities are cacophonies of overlapping activity, leading the average citizen to look for “someone to be in charge.” An authoritarian making sure “the trains run on time.” Yes, a European government, not ours.

The reason they don’t just amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College is the same reason they don’t just amend the Constitution to remove the Second Amendment. Because they know that most of us wouldn’t let them get away with it.

I have a controversial position on the Electoral College. You see, I believe that the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of Representatives at 435 members, is the bigger issue.

Aside from the allegations that it was promoted to stop urban areas mushrooming with immigrant and black populations from gaining more say in the federal government, our population has more than tripled since then, but our representation hasn’t.

Get rid of that, and states will have more electors, and you will get a more concrete view of who should “preside” over the executive branch. But I’m still working on ginning up support for that.

Cuccinelli had one last point to make about what happens now. “If this (National Popular Vote Compact) has to go through Congress, then that will be the reason the Democrats kill the filibuster. They will kill the filibuster to get the national popular vote, because they think it’ll give them advantage in 2028.”

And you thought this election was about gas prices and Iran.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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