Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a bill on Monday to add Virginia to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to award their presidential electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote. The compact now includes 18 states plus the District of Columbia, representing 222 electoral votes.

The compact does not go into effect until its member states collectively represent at least 270 electoral votes — the threshold needed to win the presidency. Alyssa Cass, a strategist for the National Popular Vote Project and Democratic consultant, said: "Bills have been introduced in almost every state, most passed in a bipartisan way."

Last year's elections gave Democrats the governor's office and full control of the Virginia legislature. Virginia House of Delegates member Dan Helmer said the effort to get Virginia into the compact took at least a decade. "We have a new generation of Democrats in Virginia, and what that means is we have people who appreciate the threats that are happening to our democracy today and are ready to take action. And the National Popular Vote Compact is one of those actions that we can take to protect American democracy right now," Helmer said.

"This is on the 5-yard line of making this a reality," Cass said. She added that the compact "has been consistently upheld even by the most conservative of courts. It was designed to be supported by the language of the Constitution."

According to Patrick Valencia, the compact is an effort to usurp the constitutionally required electoral procedures by keeping the Electoral College in place and changing the rules of how those votes are assigned.

According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans say they would prefer the winner of the presidential election to be determined by popular vote rather than the Electoral College. The center's survey, conducted before President Donald Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2024, found that 80% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans favored replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote system. The last two presidents elected without winning the popular vote were George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016.