The governor of Virginia signed a national popular vote bill into law last week that joins the state to an interstate compact with 17 others and the District of Columbia.
In signing SB322, Gov. Abigail Spanberger is assigning Virginia’s presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state.
“It is slightly more likely to benefit Democrats than Republicans because smaller states, which are mostly Republican leaning, have a slightly outsized influence in the Electoral College,” Southeast Missouri State University public policy and political science professor James Newman told NTD.
Also known as the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote, under SB322, the compact goes into effect when states cumulatively possessing a majority of the electoral votes have joined the compact.
Critics see the law as an attempt to circumvent the Electoral College.
“I think it would be subject to serious constitutional challenge,” former U.S. Attorney for the Western District John Fishwick told ABC 13. “I think this national popular vote compact really is inconsistent with the United States Constitution.”
The majority of electoral votes required is 270 out of 538.
With the state of Virginia on board, the compact now has 222 electors. The compact needs 48 more electoral votes before it can legally go into effect. However, election analyst Henry Olsen does not believe the Compact will reach 270 electoral votes, and if it did, election spending would likely triple.
“Campaigns will need to run TV ads nationwide,” Olsen told NTD. “Candidates will also travel to all the large media markets regardless of the partisan lean of a state. They’ll need to maximize free media exposure in markets with large numbers of voters, which means Democrats going to TX and Republicans going to New York, California, and Illinois.”
The Electoral College is a body of 538 state-appointed representatives who meet every four years to officially elect the president and vice president based on the popular vote results of their respective states.
Alone, Virginia had 13 electoral votes.
While this does carry the impact of law, the Compact does not provide an enforcement mechanism, according to Newman.
“Mainly, this Compact is largely symbolic,” Newman added. “But it does provide a way for a state to change its votes and provide a rationale for ignoring the votes of the people of a state if that does not vote with the other states that vote with a majority of the popular vote.”
Other states currently in the compact are Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon, Minnesota, Maine, and Virginia.