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The National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV), adopted by 17 blue states, would force the Electoral College to rubber stamp the popular vote result. And while the compact eliminates most of the checks and balances in the constitutional system, it has no protections of its own—not a single provision about recounts, uncertainty, or reconciling election practices among the states.

Consider how NPV would reward states for lowering the voting age. A fringe group of self-proclaimed “democracy” activists already wants to do this. (The Twenty-Sixth Amendment only requires that states not have a higher voting age than 18.) Today, the effect would be limited to elections within an individual state. With NPV, it would affect the results in every state in the compact.

California, according to the Census Bureau, has 1,545,012 residents aged 15, 16, and 17. Certainly not all of them would be eligible to vote, or would cast a ballot if allowed. Yet that number is larger than the population of several states. It is greater than the number of ballots cast in the 2020 election in Nevada, for example (along with 18 other states).

If NPV took effect, the dominant political party in each state would have an incentive to consider whether such a policy change would benefit their side. The same would apply for allowing people in prison to vote, or looking the other way while foreign citizens vote (some states have policies that make it nearly impossible to detect voting by foreign citizens—and a few allow it in local elections).

Is this race to the bottom an unspoken purpose behind NPV? Or is it just another unintended consequence of the poorly drafted interstate compact? Even the law professors who thought up the concept behind the compact have raised these concerns about its drafting. Whether intentional or not, it’s yet another aspect of NPV that would benefit the largest states at the expense of voters in small and medium-sized states.