Nevada Just Elected a Governor Ready to Give Away Its Electoral Votes in the Name of Fighting ‘Racism’

Nevada Governor-elect Aaron Ford has already signaled the progressive priorities that a new Democratic trifecta will pursue, and one of them is an end-run around the Electoral College. 

In comments to KOLO-TV, Ford said he now supports Nevada joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact after previously opposing it. He justified the flip by citing the Electoral College’s “frankly, racist underpinnings” and the fact that popular-vote winners have sometimes lost the presidency.

The compact is a multi-state agreement under which participating states award all their electors to the national popular-vote winner, regardless of how their own voters cast ballots. It activates only when states controlling at least 270 electoral votes have joined. 

Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have already enacted it, totaling 222 electoral votes. Nevada’s six votes, plus those of other newly Democratic-controlled states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and potentially Arizona, could push the total over the threshold in the next legislative session.

Former Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak vetoed similar legislation in 2019 precisely because, as he wrote, the compact “could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada’s electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose.” Sisolak added that when Nevada’s interests diverge from those of large states, he would stand up for Nevada.

Ford’s reversal arrives just days after Democrats completed a sweep: every statewide constitutional office for the first time since 1962, an Assembly supermajority, and unified control of state government. 

On November 6, the Globe detailed how Republican Governor Joe Lombardo’s record 162 vetoes had blocked gun restrictions, expanded labor mandates, transgender policies, environmental regulations, and other measures critics compared to California’s regulatory model. 

Ford campaigned on an immediate repeal of Nevada’s 1953 right-to-work law, enacted by voters and long protected even by prior Democrats, and on importing priorities tied to his endorsement and fundraising from California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The “racist underpinnings” claim does not survive scrutiny of the Constitutional Convention or the text. 

The Electoral College allocates electors equal to a state’s House seats (population-based) plus its two Senate seats (equal representation of states). This was the federalist compromise between large and small states, not a racial mechanism. Delegates rejected direct popular election because of practical difficulties in informing a dispersed electorate, the risk of demagogues, and the obvious danger that pure majoritarianism would erase regional and state differences. 

Hamilton defended the system in Federalist No. 68 as allowing the people’s sense to operate through electors while providing a deliberative filter and reducing the chance of tumult or cabal.The three-fifths clause was a separate, odious compromise governing congressional apportionment; the Electoral College math simply followed the same formula. 

Even then, free states voted for the Electoral College system while most slave states opposed it. The Fourteenth Amendment eliminated the three-fifths rule. Today’s allocation is race-neutral on its face and protects smaller states such as Nevada from being swamped by the dense urban (blue) populations of California, New York, and a handful of other large states. Labeling the original design racist is an ahistorical smear, but progressives, like Ford, rewrite history as a means to an end.

In 2024, Donald Trump carried Nevada; a compact already in force would have handed those votes to the national winner regardless. Once activated, campaigns would have even less reason to visit or address the interests of mid-sized and smaller states. Under the compact, Nevada voters could prefer one candidate while their six electors are pledged to the national popular-vote winner.

Legal challenges are certain: the Compact Clause and Article II raise serious questions about whether states can effectively amend the presidential election process without congressional consent or a constitutional amendment.

Ford’s spokesperson has tried to downplay the issue, saying affordability is the priority and “there will be a time to talk about presidential elections.” That is cold comfort. The new Democratic trifecta removes the veto pen that previously blocked this and other deleterious progressive measures. 

Nevada’s voters chose a governor who promised to focus on costs and who now supports a scheme that would make the state’s own presidential results irrelevant to how its electors are awarded.

Ford’s talk of “racist underpinnings” is convenient cover. The National Popular Vote Compact is not a civil-rights project; it is a power project. It lets a bloc of states—mostly large, reliably Democratic ones—decide the presidency for everyone else by converting their electoral votes into a single national popular-vote machine. Once the 270-vote threshold is reached, the preferences of smaller and mid-sized states like Nevada become irrelevant to the outcome.

That is the point. The same Democratic trifectas now in control of Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona are the ones racing to lock in that advantage. Sisolak understood the shift would weaken Nevada. Ford is embracing it. The history of the Electoral College is complicated; the politics of the compact are not.