This week, Democrats in Maine's legislature renewed their effort to elect the president according to the national popular vote when they held a hearing on a bill that would have the state join a multistate alliance to implement just such a change.
The bill under consideration would add Maine's four Electoral College votes to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which member states would collectively award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would come into force only once states with a majority of electoral votes have joined.
Currently, the statewide winner gets two of Maine’s electoral votes, while whichever candidate wins in either of the state's two congressional districts gets one additional vote per district.
Maine Democrats have controlled both the legislature and governor's office since 2019, but that year, the state House rejected a similar bill by just a few votes after the state Senate had approved it. The Portland Press Herald reports that some Democrats are still opposed to this latest push, but this time, at least one Republican in the Senate supports the plan. But while Democrats have a wide majority in the upper chamber, they can afford only a handful of defections in the House.
The compact's 17 current members (which include Washington, D.C.) currently have 205 of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate it; Maine's entry would increase that figure to 209. Because Republicans have typically opposed the agreement, its ultimate passage will likely rely on Democrats winning power in several more states. That could happen by 2028, as there's a tough yet real path to victory, as illustrated in the map at the top of this story (click here to enlarge) and in this companion spreadsheet.
The compact moved closer to the 270 mark last year due to Democratic-led drives in Minnesota, which added its 10 electoral votes to the compact, and in Nevada, which just took the first step in a multiyear process that could see the state contribute its six electoral votes by 2026.
In Michigan, meanwhile, a state House committee advanced a bill last year to add that state's 15 electoral votes to the alliance. The Senate, however, has yet to take action, and the House has been tied since November after two Democrats were elected to local offices. But if Democrats win special elections for those seats in April, they could once again press forward.
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