The victories breathe new life into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), an agreement among states to award their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. The compact would take effect only once states holding at least 270 electoral votes—a majority of the 538-member Electoral College—have signed on. Currently, 18 states and Washington, D.C., have joined, representing 222 electoral votes, leaving the compact 48 votes short of activation. Because the five newly Democratic-controlled states hold 61 electoral votes combined, only four of them would need to enact the compact to push it over the threshold.

Supporters argue the current system is fundamentally undemocratic. “There is no other election in this country where the person who loses can win the election, where the person who gets the most votes doesn’t actually win,” Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys said. “And it’s fundamentally unfair and antidemocratic, small-d democratic.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential 2028 presidential contender, voiced similar sentiments in a podcast interview released Sunday. “The national popular vote makes sense,” Shapiro said. “To me, the most important thing is that the will of the people is heard and respected, and I think popular vote is a way to do that.”

Wisconsin Gov.-elect David Crowley told The Associated Press that “we can do away with” the Electoral College.

But the path forward is far from guaranteed. Nevada Gov.-elect Aaron Ford, who unseated a Republican governor last week, has not committed to approving the compact. His spokesperson, Tai Sims, said Ford is currently focused on lowering costs. When Democrats held a trifecta in Nevada in 2019, a similar measure passed the legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat, who warned it “could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests.”

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs declined to say in a television interview Monday whether she backs the compact, despite having sponsored a bill supporting it as a state lawmaker. A spokesperson for Michigan Gov.-elect Jocelyn Benson did not respond to a request for comment.

Legislation to join the compact has already passed both chambers of the Nevada legislature and one chamber in both Michigan and Arizona in previous years.

Opponents are preparing for a legal fight. Trent England, founder and executive director of Save Our States, has argued that the Electoral College “protects presidential elections by keeping states in charge and forcing campaigns to build nationwide coalitions.” He said his group has “some of the best litigators” ready to challenge the compact, predicting that states outside the agreement could sue member states, bringing the case directly to the Supreme Court. England contends that while the Constitution allows states to determine how to choose their electors, they cannot “decide to not represent their state in the Electoral College” and “give their presidential electors away” to the national popular vote winner.

Daniel Lennington, vice president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, told The Washington Post that the Electoral College is anti-democratic by design. “I’m going to side with the founders on the idea that there are certain things, certain structures and limitations, that we put on democracy,” Lennington said. “There’s not a lot of difference between a society which is run by an autocrat versus one that’s run by 51 percent of the people in the country that are able to do whatever they want whenever they want.”

Some Democrats dismiss the threat of litigation. Chris Rabb, a Pennsylvania Democrat elected to Congress last week after working on the compact as a state lawmaker, told The Post: “If we had the attitude of not doing the right thing because of lawsuits, we wouldn’t do anything.”

Jasper Hendricks, a Democrat and 2016 presidential elector for Hillary Clinton, warned that the compact could backfire. “The National Popular Vote compact is sold as a way to improve democracy, but it would make things worse. It could force states to ignore their own voters and to accept other states’ questionable totals,” Hendricks said. “My fellow Democrats who want fair elections and public confidence in our institutions should reject NPV, which would lead to endless lawsuits and recriminations.”

The debate over the Electoral College has intensified since Republicans won the presidency in 2000 and 2016 while losing the national popular vote. Under the current system, 48 states use a winner-take-all approach, awarding all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote. The NPVIC would change that for member states, but only if enough states join—and if the compact survives the legal challenges that are all but certain to follow.