Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill on Monday adding her state to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a move that would commit Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the most votes nationwide, regardless of how Virginians themselves vote. The Virginia Republican Party called it “an unconstitutional assault on our democracy.”
The signing was part of a busy Monday in which Spanberger, who leads a state government now controlled by a Democratic majority, signed hundreds of bills into law. She vetoed a few, relating to unregulated skill-gaming machines and a proposed Fairfax County casino, and sent dozens more back with proposed amendments. But the popular vote compact drew the sharpest fire.
Under the compact, participating states agree to award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner within their own borders. The catch: the agreement stays dormant until enough states sign on to control at least 270 electoral votes, the number needed to win the presidency. With Virginia now in, the compact sits at 222 electoral votes. It needs 48 more before it activates.
Virginia Republicans respond: ‘NULL AND VOID’
The Virginia Republican Party wasted no time. In a post on X, the party wrote:
“fake Moderate Spanberger just signed a bill to render Virginians’ vote for president NULL AND VOID!”
The party elaborated that under the compact, “all of Virginia’s Electoral College votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter who wins the popular vote in our Commonwealth.” They labeled the move “an unconstitutional assault on our democracy.”
Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has also described the push as “illegal and unconstitutional,” tying it to a broader pattern of Democratic overreach in the state. Youngkin accused Spanberger of concealing her true political orientation, pointing to her redistricting referendum, set for an April 21 vote, which he said would give Democrats 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats.
The critique is straightforward: Virginia voters who cast ballots for a presidential candidate could see their state’s electors handed to the opposing candidate if the national popular vote breaks the other way. That is not a hypothetical quirk. It is the explicit design of the compact.
The compact’s long road, and its Democratic backers
The effort to bring Virginia into the compact is not new. Back in February 2020, the Virginia House of Delegates passed House Bill 177 by a 51-46 vote, as the Washington Times reported at the time. That bill was backed by the newly elected Democratic majority and sponsored by Democratic Delegates Mark Levine and Marcia “Cia” Price. At the time, Virginia’s 13 electoral votes would have brought the compact’s total to only 209, still well short of the threshold.
Democratic Del. Mark Levine argued in 2020 that “given the winner-take-all craziness of our Electoral College system, the Trump voters who chose Donald Trump in 2016 in the commonwealth of Virginia got zero votes toward the total.” It was a revealing framing, one that treated the Electoral College itself as the problem, rather than the compact’s proposed workaround.
Democrats have been staging increasingly aggressive acts of political opposition in recent months, and the popular vote compact fits neatly into that pattern. It advances a long-held progressive goal, neutralizing the Electoral College without amending the Constitution, under the guise of making “every vote count.”
The legislation that Spanberger signed passed the Virginia General Assembly largely along party lines, the Washington Examiner reported. Critics noted it would tie Virginia’s electoral votes to national results rather than the will of voters statewide.
Supporters celebrate, and eye more states
Patrick Rosenstiel, a spokesperson for National Popular Vote, told Fox News Digital he was “grateful” to Spanberger and the Virginia Legislature. He framed the signing as part of a broader campaign, saying:
“With Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, the National Popular Vote Compact is 48 electoral votes short of reaching the 270 required to activate it. We’ll continue our state-by-state work until the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president and every voter is treated equally in every presidential election.”
Rosenstiel also claimed that “their support builds critical momentum for our movement to give 63 percent of American voters what they want, a national popular vote for President.” The group said similar bills have been introduced in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, all states with significant electoral weight.
Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive group Stand Up America, praised the move as “an important step forward for representative democracy.” She added a pointed reference to the current White House, saying Virginia “has set another powerful example for other states of how to stand up for representative democracy even as they come under increasing pressure from the Trump administration.”
Harvey went further, arguing that “the presidency should be won by the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide, not just the right combination of battleground states.” That line captures the progressive case in a sentence, and also reveals its blind spot. The Founders designed the Electoral College precisely to prevent a handful of densely populated areas from dictating outcomes for the rest of the country.
The constitutional question no one wants to answer
The compact’s supporters treat it as a clever legal shortcut: states have the power to allocate their electors however they choose, so why not pledge them to the national popular vote winner? But critics, including Youngkin and the Virginia GOP, argue the arrangement amounts to an end-run around the Constitution’s amendment process. If the country wants to abolish the Electoral College, there is a mechanism for that. It requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures. The compact skips all of it.
The concern is not merely procedural. As Breitbart noted when Virginia’s House first passed a version of this bill in 2020, the compact could reduce the influence of smaller states and shift campaign focus toward dense population centers. Nevada’s then-governor, Steve Sisolak, warned at the time that “the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests.”
That warning applies with equal force to rural Virginia. Voters in the Shenandoah Valley, the Piedmont, and the state’s rural south could find their preferences overridden by turnout in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
Spanberger’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the compact bill. The silence is itself notable. A governor who was recently selected to deliver the Democrats’ response to President Trump’s State of the Union, a role that signals national ambition, chose not to defend one of the most consequential bills she signed.
A broader pattern in Richmond
The popular vote compact was not the only contentious legislation on Spanberger’s desk. Among the bills she signaled support for, with proposed amendments, was a slate of new restrictions on gun ownership, including a ban on “assault weapons,” as well as measures restricting law enforcement from assisting with immigration enforcement. State Democratic lawmakers have also introduced more than 50 new tax proposals or tax increases to the legislature.
The picture that emerges is a governor and a legislature moving fast and moving left. Other prominent Democrats have been laying out aggressive midterm playbooks, and Spanberger’s legislative blitz fits that mold, a sprint to lock in progressive priorities while the majority holds.
Youngkin’s accusation that Spanberger hid “who she really was” during her campaign gains weight with each bill she signs. The redistricting referendum, the popular vote compact, gun restrictions, limits on immigration enforcement cooperation, these are not the actions of a moderate.
Meanwhile, fractures within the Democratic Party itself suggest not everyone on the left is comfortable with the direction leaders like Spanberger are taking. But in Richmond, the majority is pressing ahead regardless.
What comes next
The compact remains 48 electoral votes short of activation. Until it crosses 270, Virginia will continue to award its electors based on its own statewide results. But the trajectory is clear. Compact backers are targeting Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, states where Democratic legislative gains or friendly governors could tip the balance.
If those efforts succeed, the compact would take effect without a single constitutional amendment, without a national referendum, and without the consent of the states left out of it. Voters in compact states would have their electors pledged to a candidate who might have lost their state by double digits.
The Virginia GOP’s language was blunt, but the underlying point is hard to argue with. When your state’s electoral votes go to the candidate your state voted against, your vote has been rendered meaningless, no matter what the compact’s supporters call it.
The Founders built the Electoral College for a reason. Dismantling it through a backroom compact of blue states is not reform. It is a workaround dressed up as democracy.
