Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to join a national compact to elect presidents by popular vote, saying that the bill would diminish the state's political power. If Nevada had joined the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," which has been adopted by 14 states and D.C., it would mean that the state would award its Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who won the popular vote nationally.
Sisolak wrote in a letter to the speaker of the Nevada Assembly that the bill would allow the state's electors to "disregard the will of the state's electorate" if a candidate won the national vote but lost in Nevada. He also said that joining the compact "could leave a sparsely populated Western state like Nevada with a greatly diminished voice in the outcome of national electoral contests.
In a statement, Patrick Rosenstiel, the senior consultant to National Popular Vote, said "we will continue our bipartisan work in every state until the National Popular Vote proposal takes effect and every American voter is politically relevant in every presidential election."
The pact's objective can only be achieved when the states that adopt the legislation collectively have 270 or more electoral votes. So far, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Columbia have signed up for the pact. The number of electoral votes between the group amounts to 189.
