10
Loading video...
By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Nevada's Governor-elect Aaron Ford said earlier this week that he had changed his mind on joining an effort to change how the Electoral College works in presidential elections.
Speaking to local outlet KOLO 8, Ford, a Democrat, said he had not initially supported an effort known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), but after doing more research had decided the Electoral College needed to be abolished.
"I didn’t initially support it frankly because I hadn’t done enough research on it, but I have researched it and looking at the Electoral College, understanding the, frankly, racist underpinnings of it in the first place leads me to believe that we need to get rid of it," Ford told the outlet. "Not only for that reason but because we’ve seen several times now the person who wins the popular vote not win because of the Electoral College."
Read More on News
The NPVIC would see states in the pact—generally known as trifectas, with control of the two state legislative chambers and the governor's mansion—opt to use their electors to vote along the overall U.S. popular vote line, rather than for the candidate that won in their respective state, to get the popular vote winner over the 270-vote threshold. Before the midterm election, the compact comprised members with a total of 222 electoral votes.
Pat Rosentiel, a senior consultant with National Popular Vote, which is advocating for the change, told Newsweek that there had been "very significant movement and interest in all trifecta states and beyond."
"We are working with legislators, governors, coalition partners and citizens to do anything in our power to elect the president by national popular vote in 2028," he said. "We welcome Governor Ford to the movement and are very grateful for his support."
In a statement to Newsweek on Friday, Tai Sims, a spokesperson for Ford, said that “Nevadans are facing a cost-of-living crisis," and that the incoming governor "is focused on building an administration that will deliver for the people of Nevada by lowering costs, improving the quality of health care, and creating good-paying jobs."
Sims continued: “While the Governor-elect supports the national popular vote compact, his main focus is making life more affordable and putting money back into Nevadans’ pockets. There will be a time to talk about presidential elections, but right now Ford’s focus is lowering costs for working families.”
Newsweek reached out to the governor or governor-elect offices of the other new trifecta states—Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire—for comment Friday morning.
Related Story
Blue Tsunami May Have Outsized 2028 Impact as Left Eyes Electoral College
...
What Is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?
The NPVIC currently comprises 18 states and the District of Columbia, which together have 222 Electoral College votes.
The idea behind the compact is that their votes would be used to circumvent the current Electoral College practice of dedicating votes to the state's overall winner, rather than the winner of the popular vote.
However, that requires having enough states in the group to get over the 270-vote line needed to win a majority and therefore the presidency.
"The five new trifecta states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada—have 61 Electoral College votes altogether," Steven Rogers, a political-science professor at Saint Louis University, told Newsweek previously. "If each agrees to the Compact, it could effectively establish a national popular vote for the presidency."
While the movement has a Democratic Party lean, advocates have said the change could benefit either party. If a Republican candidate won the popular vote, they could then win the White House even if they traditionally would not have enough Electoral College votes.
Why the Movement Is Gaining Momentum
The movement toward the compact being enacted appeared to gain steam last week following the Democrats' sweeping midterms victories, which saw the party flip longtime red seats and set up more trifecta states under Democratic Party control.
Nevada is among that group, adding a potential six votes, along with Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Rogers told Newsweek that adding all of these states, their leaders willing, would push the voting power to 287 electoral votes.
The idea has garnered support from prominent Democrats, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who said in 2020 he believed the popular vote was the way forward and repeated that view at an event in Washington, D.C., on November 7, saying, "I’ll work with lawmakers to figure out what the right mechanism is for moving forward on that."
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has also advocated for reform, telling Politico in August that the Electoral College needed to be abolished.
Did the Electoral College Have Racist Beginnings?
Ford's comment that the Electoral College had "racist underpinnings" reflects widely discussed views that the system was formed out of a compromise over slavery and its modern-day impact on the voting power of minorities.
The system was formed in 1787 as part of efforts to address concerns of Southern slaveholding states, which would have had lesser voting power due to much of their populations being enslaved and therefore unable to vote.
Writing in The Atlantic in 2019, Brennan Center for Justice fellow Wilfred U. Codrington III said, "Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history: Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost."
The Three-Fifths Compromise meant a state's electoral votes could be boosted by including enslaved people in their Electoral College number without giving that group the right to cast a ballot.
In the modern era, many Black Americans who tend to vote Democrat but are scattered across red states have voiced concerns that their votes either do not matter as much, or they are overlooked by both parties, according to the League of Women Voters in 2025.
The LWV also said that other minorities are also disproportionately affected by the Electoral College, including Native Americans in the Dakotas which are safe Republican seats despite that community often voting Democrat.
Concerns About Democratic Dominance
While President Donald Trump once called the Electoral College "a disaster for democracy," in a social media post in 2012, his party has largely pushed back against the idea of the compact and abolishing the system.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted to X Thursday, "Abolishing the Electoral College would mean not knowing who won the presidency for 4 weeks while California keeps counting. No thanks," in response to a post about Buttigieg's support.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has also backed the current setup, saying on X that preserving the Electoral College "protects liberty from one party installing a president and the tyranny that follows."
"Opposition to this is simply fervor for easy, fast power grabs that silence the rest of the country," he wrote, referring to concern that electing a president via popular vote would lessen the voices of those in less populous states, which tend to lean Republican.
Does Congress Need to Act?
A key question remains around whether the new setup could be achieved by the 2028 presidential election without it being a rushed job.
One of the plan's original architects, Vikram Amar, a distinguished professor of law at UC Davis School of Law, told Newsweek on November 6 that while he still supported the idea, it needed more than a year or so "to get the project operational in a way that is unlikely to have major glitches."
Congress may be needed as part of implementing the compact, although this remains an unresolved Constitutional question. National Popular Vote has argued that states could implement the plan alone, but the conservative Heritage Foundation has said Congress must approve the plan before it can take effect.
Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Samantha Beech and Anthony Murray.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines