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A new article at Vox.com shows just how far supporters of the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV) will go to avoid answering concerns about their plan’s technical defects. The article raises the specter of Democrats winning control of enough legislatures and governors' mansions this November to get NPV enacted in enough states to put it into effect for the 2028 presidential election.

The Vox article notes some very serious defects in the compact identified by, among others, Professor Akhil Amar, who is credited as one of three people who created the idea of this compact (along with his brother Vikram Amar, a law professor at UC Davis, and Robert Bennett, a law professor at Northwestern). When the article’s author raised these defects with the compact’s defenders, the response was basically to shrug them off because “a popular vote is what the American people actually want” and “…malefactors who seek to undermine and game the new system will face public backlash.”   

That might be the most naïve and dangerous thing defenders of the compact have ever said, coming in the midst of a mid-decade redistricting battle and following the events of January 6, 2021. It should be obvious that we are in an era when partisans of all stripes will grab any short-term advantage they can get, regardless of public backlash. NPV’s response is what I call the “English Bob” vision of National Popular Vote. In the movie Unforgiven, English Bob was a gunslinger from England who explained that the “dignity of royalty” would cause the hands of someone to “shake as if palsied” if they pointed a gun at a king or queen, whereas a president was common enough that, as he put it, “Well, why not shoot the president?” 

That is how NPV’s lobbyists dismiss concerns that partisans would risk public backlash in an effort to “undermine and game the new system.” In 2026, I suspect we can all think of more than a few high-level officials and individuals whose hands would not “shake as if palsied” were they to have the opportunity to manipulate the outcome of a presidential election. It’s a nonsensical response, and very much indicative of the unseriousness of the people attempting to eviscerate the Electoral College. They hope legislators and others don’t look too closely at the compact’s details.