The National Popular Vote (NPV) Initiative: Direct Election of the President by Interstate Compact. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Thomas H. Neale, Andrew Nolan. October 25, 2018
The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiative proposes an agreement among the states, an interstate compact that would effectively achieve direct popular election of the President and Vice President without a constitutional amendment. It relies on the Constitution’s grant of authority to the states in Article II, Section 1 to appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct…. ” Any state that joins the NPV compact pledges to award all its electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the most popular votes nationwide, regardless of who wins in that particular state. The number of electoral votes won by the national popular vote winners would depend on the number of electoral votes controlled by NPV member states. The compact would, however, come into effect only if its success has been assured; that is, only if states controlling a majority of electoral votes (270 or more) join the compact. Recent action by the Connecticut legislature to join the compact has generated renewed interest in the NPV initiative. At the time of this writing, 11 states and the District of Columbia, which jointly control 172 electoral votes, have joined the compact.
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