A national effort to circumvent the Electoral College has gained another state.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill Monday that adds the state to the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement among states to award their presidential electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner.
With Virginia, the total number of states signed on to the interstate compact is now 18, plus the District of Columbia, for a total of 222 electoral votes.
The compact doesn’t go into effect, though, until there are enough states signed up to reach the required 270 electoral votes to elect a president.
The system was designed so the House of Representatives would grow with the size of the population. But the Apportionment Acts of the early 1900s that limited the house to 435 members broke the balance of the system. The senate was always supposed to have 2 votes per state, but now you can have one rep with 10,000 constituents have the same political power (vote) as a rep with over a million.