Opinion | Dan Varroney: Earn broad consent before changing how we elect presidents

In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, Dan Varroney argues that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is the wrong way to change how Americans choose their president.

"Elections have consequences. But a victory at the ballot box does not give politicians a blank check to fundamentally change how Americans elect their president," Varroney writes.

Under the compact, participating states agree to give their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, "even when their own citizens preferred someone else." It takes effect once its members control 270 electoral votes. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have signed on so far, worth 222 electoral votes.

Varroney says a change that lets one national tally control a decisive bloc of electors should have to clear the higher bar of a constitutional amendment, and that his view "would remain the same regardless of which party expected to benefit." He cites James Madison in Federalist No. 49: "The people are the only legitimate fountain of power."