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Below is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of Ben Wikler’s new book, “This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.” Wikler served as chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from July 2019 to July 2025.

NPVIC

If Democrats win a trifecta in Wisconsin and the other up-for-grab battleground states this year, then state governments could pass a law that would fundamentally change the way that the United States of America chooses its presidents—for the better.

It’s a law that, if passed by enough state legislatures (and signed by enough governors), would shift national power toward the voters themselves—creating a political earthquake that would do away with the idea of “battleground states” altogether.

It’s called NPVIC.

NPVIC stands for National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a state law providing that, once it comes into effect, the state’s Electoral College votes should be awarded to whoever wins the national popular vote.

But here’s the rub: The law only comes into effect if and when enough states have passed NPVIC to constitute an Electoral College majority.

In other words, once states with enough Electoral College votes to add up to at least 270 pass the law, NPVIC becomes binding, and then in the next presidential election, whoever wins the most votes nationwide becomes the next president.

Consider the 2024 election. Suppose you lived in New York. Your state voted for Kamala Harris. New York passed NPVIC in 2014. But the law hasn’t taken effect, because, to date, not enough states to reach 270 Electoral College votes have passed it. So New York’s twenty-eight Electoral College votes went to Kamala Harris, but Trump won the presidency.

But suppose NPVIC had been in effect at the time. In that world, New York’s Electoral College votes would have gone to whoever won the national popular vote—which, that year, meant Donald Trump. And so would the Electoral College votes of enough other states to ensure that Trump, as the national popular vote winner, would get the presidency.

Now go back to the hopeful, halcyon days of 2016. Imagine you live in Wyoming. Sure, that’s unlikely (almost nobody lives in Wyoming), but this is an imaginary scenario. And in this scenario, imagine that Wyoming had passed NPVIC and it had come into effect.

You, a proud Wyomingite, vote for Hillary Clinton. Your state votes overwhelmingly for Trump. But now, thanks to NPVIC, Wyoming’s three Electoral College votes go to whoever wins the national popular vote. And so do the Electoral College votes of all the NPVIC states. In 2016, Hillary Clinton wins 2,868,686 more votes than Trump. So, thanks to NPVIC, Clinton wins the election.

NPVIC might sound like some political scientist’s pie-in-the-sky fantasy—but guess what? As of this writing, eighteen states plus DC, representing 222 Electoral College votes, have already passed it.

That leaves forty-eight Electoral College votes to go. This year, pro-democracy state legislative majorities are within reach in states representing another sixty-five Electoral College votes. More than enough to cross the finish line and make the law take effect over an election cycle or two.

With NPVIC, the Electoral College will still exist, but it will be a formality, like how Britain’s monarch officially appoints the democratically elected prime minister. No constitutional amendment needed. Which is helpful, because amending the Constitution requires votes by three-quarters of the states, which is, these days, a huge pain in the ass.

So is this an end run around the Constitution? No. The truth is that we’ve already reduced the Electoral College to a formality.

The framers of the Constitution wanted the electors to exercise their personal judgment in picking the president. The idea, as described in the Federalist Papers (see Federalist No. 68), was that electors would be these wise candidate pickers, trusted by their states, who in turn would evaluate the presidential candidates and choose the best one.

Today electors in most states are bound by law to choose whoever won the popular vote in their state. On top of that, the structure of the Electoral College was a compromise in the first place with enslavers who wanted extra political power for their regional bloc. We fought a civil war over that notion and then passed a bunch of constitutional amendments to enfranchise everyone and become more “of the people, by the people, for the people”- y.

NPVIC isn’t a revolutionary idea, whatever its critics might claim. It’s just wrapping up some unfinished business.

When NPVIC takes effect, candidates for president will have to fight for every vote in the country, and every voter will count the same. Presidential elections will no longer be, for most of the country, a spectator sport. And the work that volunteers do to build political engagement in their own community will affect not just local politics, but the fate of the whole country.

Suppose you’ve already traveled the journey from “What the hell is NPVIC?” to “Wait, how would NPVIC work?” all the way to “This sounds good. But how the hell do we pronounce it? 

I have an elegant proposal: Let’s all agree that it’s pronounced NIP-VICK, as in, rhymes with “lipstick.”

Just like NPVIC itself, my proposal will take effect if enough of us agree to do it. And it’ll save us a lot of syllables. Plus it’s a great mnemonic. To make the Electoral College look good, just put on a little NPVIC.

Which leaves another question: How do we pass it in enough states?

Well, I wish I could tell you that this isn’t a partisan issue. And it’s genuinely the case that it’s not clear whether NPVIC would help Democrats or Republicans more in any given election year. What’s clear is that it would help democracy. But unfortunately, these days, that means it’s mainly supported by Democrats.

Even though it’s passed a few Republican-controlled legislative chambers in a few red states, like Oklahoma and Arkansas, the only states where it’s actually been signed into law have been those with Democratic trifectas. The extraordinary thing is that, this year, Democrats are on the verge of trifectas in six states that haven’t yet passed NPVIC into law: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and New Hampshire. 

Once NPVIC kicks in, candidates would have to work to earn the support of voters everywhere, not just in purple states like Wisconsin. Everyone with a vote would have a say. Everyone’s ballot would hold equal weight. Wisconsinites would still be special for many, many reasons, but “special because they have unique power in choosing presidents” would no longer be among them. And the United States of America would be a very long stop closer to being worthy of the word “democracy.”