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First-year law students learn that a contract only binds the parties to it. Relying on non-parties makes a contract vulnerable to unintentional or intentional interference. Yet a plan to change presidential elections relies on just this kind of unstable agreement. The National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV) could take effect with fewer than half the states participating, yet assumes that every state will cooperate.

Every state is involved in multiple interstate compacts. These agreements between two or more states are enacted through a state’s legislative process and sometimes ratified by Congress. The simplest relate to shared borders and infrastructure. More complicated compacts manage water rights and utility grids, or establish reciprocity on topics like occupational licensing.

Common to all these established compacts is the common-sense understanding that they involve only the states that join. The NPV compact is entirely different. Each state in the compact would rely on all of the other states, including those not in the compact, to provide election data.

This raises three concerns:

1. Timing: states are not obligated to release data early so that compact states can then finalize their own results;

2. Mistakes: election problems that have minimal impact within an individual state could have a magnified effect on national totals; and

3. Politics: many strategies exist for non-compact states to manipulate or sabotage NPV.

The presidential election process needs safeguards and certainty, not an interstate compact that fails Contracts 101.