title: Raja Hindustani

text: Alka Yagnik considers "Poochho Zara Poocho" as one of the best songs she ever rendered. The song has been copied by many a composer since. Anand-Milind lifted the tune in the "Tumse Dil Lagane Ki Sazaa Hai" part of the song and used it in the song "Mausam Ki Tarah Tum Bhi Badal To Na Jaaoge" from "Jaanwar" (1999). Both songs were picturized on Karisma Kapoor and had in common, singer and lyricist: Alka Yagnik and Sameer. The director of the later movie is Suneel Darshan, who is an elder sibling to Dharmesh Darshan.


title: Raja Hindustani

text: Again, the same portion of the song was used by Himesh Reshammiya in the "Tujhe Apna Dil Dene Ka Hai Mazaa" part of the song "Pyaar Kar" from the film "Humraaz" (2002).


title: Raja Hindustani

text: One of the riffs used in the background score of the film was later on used by Nadeem-Shravan in the chorus of the song "Tum Dil Ki Dhadkan Mein", from the film "Dhadkan" (2000). "Dhadkan" was also directed by Dharmesh Darshan, with the movie's soundtrack composed by Nadeem-Shravan, and lyrics written by Sameer.


title: Raja Hindustani

text: The song, "Saala Main To Sahab Ban Gaya""," from the 1974 film "Sagina," was briefly used in the movie. The song was picturised on Aamir Khan. In "Sagina," the song was filmed on Dilip Kumar and sung by Kishore Kumar. In this film, Kishore Kumar's original vocals were retained.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement. Following the partition of Ireland, it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles, during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party (OUP).


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Under David Trimble, the party helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the conflict. Trimble served as the first First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002. However, it was overtaken as the largest unionist party in 2003 by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). As of 2022 it is the fourth-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, after the DUP, Sinn Féin, and the Alliance Party. The party has been unrepresented in Westminster since losing its two seats in 2017. Since 2021 the party has been led by Doug Beattie.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Between 1905 and 1972, its peers and MPs took the Conservative Party whip at Westminster, in effect functioning as the Northern Irish branch of the party. This arrangement came to an end in 1972 over disagreements over the Sunningdale Agreement. The two parties have remained institutionally separate ever since, with the exception of the 2009–2012 Ulster Conservatives and Unionists electoral alliance.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The Ulster Unionist Party traces its formal existence back to the foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905. Before that, however, there had been a less formally organised Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA) since the late 19th century, usually dominated by unionists from Ulster. Modern organised unionism properly emerged after William Ewart Gladstone's introduction in 1886 of the first of three Home Rule Bills in response to demands by the Irish Parliamentary Party. The IUA was an alliance of Irish Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, the latter having split from the Liberal Party over the issue of home rule. It was the merger of these two parties in 1912 that gave rise to the current name of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to which the UUP was formally linked (to varying degrees) until 1985.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: From the beginning, the party had a strong association with the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organisation. The original composition of the Ulster Unionist Council was 25% Orange delegates; however, this was reduced through the years. Although most unionist support was based in Ulster, within the geographic area that later became Northern Ireland, there were at one time unionist enclaves throughout all of Ireland. Unionists in Dublin and County Wicklow and in parts of County Cork were particularly influential. The initial leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party all came from outside what would later become Northern Ireland; men such as Colonel Saunderson, Viscount (later the Earl of) Midleton and the Dubliner Sir Edward Carson, all members of the Irish Unionist Alliance. However, after the Irish Convention failed to reach an understanding on home rule and with the Partition of Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Irish unionism in effect split. Many southern unionist politicians quickly became reconciled with the new Irish Free State, sitting in its Seanad or joining its political parties. The existence of a separate Ulster Unionist Party became entrenched as the party took control of the new Government of Northern Ireland.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The leadership of the UUP was taken by Sir Edward Carson in 1910. Throughout his 11-year leadership, he fought a sustained campaign against Irish Home Rule, including being involved in the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) in 1912. At the 1918 general election, Carson switched constituencies from his former seat of Dublin University to Belfast Duncairn. Carson strongly opposed the partition of Ireland and the end of unionism as an all-Ireland political force, so he refused the opportunity to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland or even to sit in the Northern Ireland House of Commons, citing a lack of connection with the place. The leadership of the UUP and, subsequently, Northern Ireland, was taken by Sir James Craig.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Until almost the very end of its period of power in Northern Ireland, the UUP was led by a combination of landed gentry (The 1st Viscount Brookeborough, Hugh MacDowell Pollock and James Chichester-Clark), aristocracy (Terence O'Neill) and gentrified industrial magnates (The 1st Viscount Craigavon and J. M. Andrews – nephew of The 1st Viscount Pirrie). Only its last Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, was from a middle-class background. During this era, all but 11 of the 149 UUP Stormont MPs were members of the Orange Order, as were all Prime Ministers.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The 1st Viscount Craigavon governed Northern Ireland from its inception until his death in November 1940, and is buried with his wife by the east wing of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. His successor, J. M. Andrews, was heavily criticised for appointing octogenarian veterans of Lord Craigavon's administration to his cabinet. His government was also believed to be more interested in protecting the statue of Carson at the Stormont Estate than the citizens of Belfast during the Belfast blitz. A backbench revolt in 1943 resulted in his resignation and replacement by Sir Basil Brooke (later Viscount Brookeborough), although Andrews was recognised as leader of the party until 1946.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Lord Brookeborough, despite having felt that Craigavon had held on to power for too long, was Prime Minister for one year longer. During this time he was on more than one occasion called to meetings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland to explain his actions, most notably following the 1947 Education Act which made the government responsible for the payment of National Insurance contributions of teachers in Catholic Church-controlled schools. Ian Paisley called for Brookeborough's resignation in 1953 when he refused to sack Brian Maginess and Clarence Graham, who had given speeches supporting re-admitting Catholics to the UUP. He retired in 1963 and was replaced by Terence O'Neill, who emerged ahead of other candidates, Jack Andrews and Faulkner.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In the 1960s, identifying with the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. and encouraged by attempts at reform under O'Neill, various organisations campaigned for civil rights, calling for changes to the system for allocating public housing and the voting system for the local government franchise, which was restricted to (disproportionately Protestant) rate payers. O'Neill had pushed through some reforms but in the process the Ulster Unionists became strongly divided. At the 1969 Stormont general election UUP candidates stood on both pro- and anti-O'Neill platforms. Several independent pro-O'Neill unionists challenging his critics, while the Protestant Unionist Party of Ian Paisley mounted a hard-line challenge. The result proved inconclusive for O'Neill, who resigned a short time later. His resignation was probably caused by a speech of James Chichester-Clark who stated that he disagreed with the timing, but not the principle, of universal suffrage at local elections.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Chichester-Clark won the leadership election to replace O'Neill and swiftly moved to implement many of O'Neill's reforms. Civil disorder continued to mount, culminating in August 1969 when Catholic Bogside residents clashed with the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Derry because of an Apprentice Boys of Derry march, sparking days of riots. Early in 1971, Chichester-Clark flew to London to request further military aid following the 1971 Scottish soldiers' killings. When this was all but refused, he resigned to be replaced by Brian Faulkner.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Faulkner's government struggled though 1971 and into 1972. After Bloody Sunday, the British Government threatened to remove control of the security forces from the devolved government. Faulkner reacted by resigning with his entire cabinet, and the British Government suspended, and eventually abolished, the Northern Ireland Parliament, replacing it with Direct Rule.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The liberal unionist group, the New Ulster Movement, which had advocated the policies of Terence O'Neill, left and formed the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland in April 1970, while the emergence of Ian Paisley's Protestant Unionist Party continued to draw off some working-class and more Ulster loyalist support.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In June 1973 the UUP won a majority of seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, but the party was divided on policy. The Sunningdale Agreement, which led to the formation of a power-sharing Executive under Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner, ruptured the party. In the 1973 elections to the Executive the party found itself divided, a division that did not formally end until January 1974 with the triumph of the anti-Sunningdale faction. Faulkner was then overthrown, and he set up the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI). The Ulster Unionists were then led by Harry West from 1974 until 1979. In the February 1974 general election, the party participated in the United Ulster Unionist Coalition (UUUC) with Vanguard and the Democratic Unionist Party, successor to the Protestant Unionist Party. The result was that the UUUC won 11 out of 12 parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland on a fiercely anti-Sunningdale platform, although they barely won 50% of the overall popular vote. This result was a fatal blow for the Executive, which soon collapsed.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Up until 1972 the UUP sat with the Conservative Party at Westminster, traditionally taking the Conservative parliamentary whip. To all intents and purposes the party functioned as the Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party. In 1972, in protest over the prorogation of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, the Westminster Ulster Unionist MPs withdrew from the alliance. The party remained affiliated to the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, but in 1985, withdrew from it as well, in protest over the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Subsequently, the Conservative Party has organised separately in Northern Ireland, with little electoral success.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Under West's leadership, the party recruited Enoch Powell, who became Ulster Unionist MP for South Down in October 1974 after defecting from the Conservatives. Powell advocated a policy of 'integration', whereby Northern Ireland would be administered as an integral part of the United Kingdom. This policy divided both the Ulster Unionists and the wider unionist movement, as Powell's ideas conflicted with those supporting a restoration of devolved government to Northern Ireland. The party also made gains upon the break-up of the Vanguard Party and its merger back into the Ulster Unionists. The separate United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) emerged from the remains of Vanguard but folded in the early 1980s, as did the UPNI. In both cases the main beneficiaries of this were the Ulster Unionists, now under the leadership of James Molyneaux (1979–95).


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: David Trimble led the party between 1995 and 2005. His support for the Belfast Agreement caused a rupture within the party into pro-agreement and anti-agreement factions. Trimble served as First Minister of Northern Ireland in the power-sharing administration created under the Belfast Agreement.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Unusually for a unionist party, the UUP had a Catholic MLA in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Sir John Gorman until the 2003 election. In March 2005, the Orange Order voted to end its official links with the UUP. Trimble faced down Orange Order critics who tried to suspend him for his attendance at a Catholic funeral for a young boy killed by the Real IRA in the Omagh bombing. In a sign of unity, Trimble and President of Ireland Mary McAleese walked into the church together.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In the 2001 general election, the Ulster Unionists lost a number of seats belonging to UUP stalwarts; for example, John Taylor, the former deputy leader of the party, lost his seat of Strangford to Iris Robinson.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The party's misfortunes continued at the 2005 election. The party held six seats at Westminster immediately before the 2005 general election, down from seven after the previous general election following the defection of Jeffrey Donaldson in 2004. The election resulted in the loss of five of their six seats. The only seat won by an Ulster Unionist was North Down, by Sylvia Hermon, who had won the seat in the 2001 general election from Robert McCartney of United Kingdom Unionist Party. David Trimble himself lost his seat in Upper Bann and resigned as party leader soon after. The ensuing leadership election was won by Reg Empey.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In May 2006 UUP leader Empey attempted to create a new assembly group that would have included Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) leader David Ervine. The PUP is the political wing of the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Many in the UUP, including the last remaining MP, Sylvia Hermon, were opposed to the move. The link was in the form of a new group called the 'Ulster Unionist Party Assembly Group' whose membership was the 24 UUP MLAs and Ervine. Empey justified the link by stating that under the d'Hondt method for allocating ministers in the Assembly, the new group would take a seat in the Executive from Sinn Féin.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Following a request for a ruling from the DUP's Peter Robinson, the Speaker ruled that the UUPAG was not a political party within the meaning of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The party did poorly in the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election. The party retained 18 of its seats within the assembly. Empey was the only leader of one of the four main parties not to be re-elected on first preference votes alone in the Assembly elections of March 2007.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In July 2008, the UUP and Conservative Party announced that a joint working group had been established to examine closer ties. On 26 February 2009, the Ulster Unionist Executive and area council of Northern Ireland Conservatives agreed to field joint candidates in future elections to the House of Commons and European Parliament under the name "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force" (UCUNF). The agreement meant that Ulster Unionist MPs could have sat in a Conservative Government, renewing the relationship that had broken down in 1974 over the Sunningdale Agreement and in 1985 over the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The UUP's sole remaining MP at the time, Sylvia Hermon, opposed the agreement, stating she would not be willing to stand under the UCUNF banner.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In February 2010, Hermon confirmed that she would not be seeking a nomination as a UCUNF candidate for the forthcoming general election. On 25 March 2010, she formally resigned from the party and announced that she would be standing as an independent candidate at the general election. As a result, the UUP were left without representation in the House of Commons for the first time since the party's creation. At the 2010 general election, UCUNF won no seats in Northern Ireland (while Hermon won hers as an independent). The UCUNF label was not used again.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Following the election, Empey resigned as leader. He was replaced by Tom Elliott as party leader in the subsequent leadership election. During the leadership election, it emerged that a quarter of the UUP membership came from Fermanagh and South Tyrone, the constituency of Elliott. The Dublin-based political magazine, "the Phoenix", described Elliott as a "blast from the past" and said that his election signified "a significant shift to the right" by the UUP. Shortly after his election, three 2010 general election candidates resigned: Harry Hamilton, Paula Bradshaw and Trevor Ringland. Bradshaw and Hamilton subsequently joined the Alliance Party.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The party further declined in the 2011 Assembly elections. It lost two seats and won fewer votes than the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) (although it won more seats than the SDLP) and two of its candidates, Bill Manwaring and Lesley Macaulay, subsequently joined the Conservative Party. In addition, east of the Bann, it lost seats to the Alliance Party. It was also overtaken by Alliance on Belfast City Council. In November 2011, the Conservative Party chairman, Lord Feldman, wrote to Elliott to propose a formal and permanent merger of the two parties. The proposal, which had the backing of David Cameron, would have seen the UUP form the backbone of a new party called the Northern Ireland Conservative and Unionist Party (NICUP). Elliott rejected the merger and called the proposed dissolution of the UUP "unacceptable".


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Tom Elliott was criticised for comments he made in his victory speech where he described elements of Sinn Féin as "scum". Elliott resigned in March 2012 saying some people had not given him a 'fair opportunity' to develop and progress many party initiatives. Mike Nesbitt was elected leader on 31 March 2012, beating the only other candidate, John McCallister, by 536 votes to 129.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In the 2014 European election Jim Nicholson held his MEP seat, although his percentage of the vote decreased to 13.3% (-3.8%). The party gained 15 seats in the local elections that same day. They polled 16.1% (+0.9%), making it the only party to increase its vote share.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: At the 2015 general election, the UUP returned to Westminster, gaining the South Antrim seat from the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone (where they had an electoral pact with the DUP not standing) from Sinn Féin.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In 2016, the UUP and the SDLP decided not to accept the seats on the Northern Ireland Executive to which they would have been entitled and to form an official opposition to the executive. This marked the first time that a devolved government in Northern Ireland did not include the UUP.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In the 2016 European Union referendum the UUP supported the remain campaign, the UUP Executive passing a motion on 5 March 2016 that the party "believes that on balance Northern Ireland is better remaining in the European Union, with the UK Government pressing for further reform and a return to the founding principle of free trade, not greater political union. The Party respects that individual members may vote for withdrawal."


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: At the 2017 general election the UUP lost both of its Commons seats, losing South Antrim to the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone to Sinn Féin. The party polled 10.3% (-5.7%) and failed to take any other seats.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In the 2019 local elections the UUP polled 14.1% (-2.0) winning 75 council seats, 13 fewer than in 2014.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: They lost their single MEP at the 2019 European Parliament elections following the retirement of Jim Nicholson. Danny Kennedy stood as the UUP candidate polling 9.3% (-4.0%). Steve Aiken succeeded Robin Swann as leader in November 2019.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The party increased its vote share to 11.7% (+1.4%) in the 2019 general election, but failed to re-gain a seat. Their best result was in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, where Tom Elliott lost to Sinn Féin by 57 votes. The UUP currently has no representation in the House of Commons.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Steve Aiken resigned on 8 May 2021, and Doug Beattie was elected as leader on 17 May 2021. Beattie, a former soldier, is perceived as a progressive unionist, and it was predicted that, following his election as leader, the party would reclaim some of the centre-ground which they had lost to the Alliance Party.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: After Beattie became leader, a number of new members joined the party including former Belfast PUP councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston, Derry and Strabane DUP councillor Ryan McCready, former Independent Irish Senator Ian Marshall, Belfast Alliance Party councillor Carole Howard and Belfast PUP councillor John Kyle


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In October 2021, Newry and Mourne UUP councillor Harold McKee resigned from the party because of Beattie's promotion of 'liberal values'.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: In January 2022 Beattie made what some saw as a misogynistic joke about DAERA minister Edwin Poots and his wife. After this it was found that he had made other controversial jokes on social media, before entering politics, and he made a statement apologizing.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The party nominated 27 candidates across all 18 constituencies for the 2022 Assembly election, an increase of three from the 2017 election. They received 96,390 votes, 11.2% of the total, down 1.7% from the 2017 Assembly election. They had 9 MLAs elected, down 1 from 2017 after Roy Beggs Jr lost his seat in East Antrim to Alliance.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The UUP is organised around the Ulster Unionist Council, which was from 1905 until 2004 the only legal representation of the party. Following the adoption of a new Constitution in 2004, the UUP has been an entity in its own right, however the UUC still exists as the supreme decision-making body of the Party. In autumn 2007 the delegates system was done away with, and today all UUP members are members of the Ulster Unionist Council, with entitlements to vote for the Leader, party officers and on major policy decisions.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: Each constituency in Northern Ireland forms the boundary of a UUP constituency association, which is made up of branches formed along local boundaries (usually district electoral areas). There are also four 'representative bodies', the Ulster Women's Unionist Council, the Ulster Young Unionist Council, the Westminster Unionist Association (the party's Great Britain branch) and the Ulster Unionist Councillors Association. Each constituency association and representative body elects a number of delegates to the executive committee, which governs many areas of party administration such as membership and candidate selection.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The UUP maintained a formal connection with the Orange Order from its foundation until 2005, and with the Apprentice Boys of Derry until 1975. While the party was considering structural reforms, including the connection with the Order, it was the Order itself that severed the connection in 2004. The connection with the Apprentice Boys was cut in a 1975 review of the party's structure as they had not taken up their delegates for several years beforehand.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The UUP's youth organisation is the Young Unionists, which was re-constituted by young activists in March 2004 as a rebrand of the Ulster Young Unionist Council. The UYUC was formed in 1946 and disbanded twice, in 1974 and 2004. There is a Young Unionist student association in Queen's University Belfast.


title: Ulster Unionist Party

text: The UUP lost its two seats in the 2017 election. South Antrim went to the DUP while Fermanagh and South Tyrone went to Sinn Féin. It failed to regain any seats at the 2019 election.


title: DNEG

text: DNEG (formerly known as Double Negative) is a British visual effects, computer animation, and stereo conversion studio that was founded in 1998 in London, and rebranded as DNEG in 2014 after a merger with Indian VFX company Prime Focus.


title: DNEG

text: The company has received seven Academy Awards for its work on the films "Inception", "Interstellar", "Ex Machina", "Blade Runner 2049", "First Man, Tenet" and "Dune". In addition, DNEG has received BAFTA awards for "Inception", "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 ", "Interstellar", "Blade Runner 2049, Tenet, Dune" and "Black Mirror"s "Metalhead", and Visual Effects Society awards for its work on films such as "The Dark Knight Rises", "Sherlock Holmes", "Inception", "Interstellar", "Dunkirk," "Blade Runner 2049, Altered Carbon, First Man, Chernobyl, Last Night In Soho, Foundation and Dune." It has also received Primetime Emmy Awards for its work on "Dreamkeeper", "Chernobyl" and of "."


title: DNEG

text: DNEG is headquartered in Fitzrovia, London with additional locations in Vancouver, Mumbai, Los Angeles, Chennai, Montréal, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Toronto.


title: DNEG

text: Double Negative first opened its doors in 1998 in London and was founded by a small group of industry professionals, including Peter Chiang (Senior VFX Supervisor), Matt Holben (Joint MD), Alex Hope (Joint MD) and Paul Franklin (Senior VFX Supervisor).


title: DNEG

text: Its first project was "Pitch Black", released in 2000. Since then, notable projects have included "Enemy at the Gates, Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Children of Men, Inception, Iron Man 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, John Carter, Green Zone, Interstellar, Ex Machina, Spectre, Blade Runner 2049, and ."


title: DNEG

text: DNEG's visual effects work has been honored with seven Academy Awards, seven BAFTAs, eighteen Visual Effects Society Awards and three Primetime Emmy Awards.


title: DNEG

text: In July 2014, Prime Focus World merged with Double Negative; the merged company was rebranded as DNEG. The two companies announced the upcoming opening of a Mumbai branch following the merger.


title: DNEG

text: Since 2014, DNEG has opened new facilities in Vancouver, Mumbai, Los Angeles, Chennai, Montréal, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Toronto.


title: DNEG

text: In August 2021, UK-based firm Novator Capital Advisors invested $250 million in Prime Focus Limited, DNEG’s parent company.


title: DNEG

text: On January 25, 2022, DNEG announced its entry into a definitive business combination agreement with Sports Ventures Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: AKIC). Upon the closing of the business combination, subject to customary closing conditions including the approval of the stockholders of Sports Ventures Acquisition Corp., which was expected in the first half of 2022, the combined public company would be named DNEG. The merger was called off in June of 2022.


title: DNEG

text: In November 2022, DNEG announced plans to open a location in Sydney, Australia, where its VFX and animation divisions will work. The new studio will open in 2023 in Pyrmont and be headed by VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson. It will lead the visual effects for George Miller's "Furiosa".


title: DNEG

text: DNEG started as a visual effects (VFX) studio specialised in VFX for feature films. Over the years its offering expanded to include VFX and animation for feature film and television, and stereo conversion.


title: DNEG

text: In 2013 the company launched its Episodic VFX team dedicated to the creation of VFX for television, OTT and streaming providers and designed to allow content producers and networks access to DNEG’s team and infrastructure for non-theatrical projects.


title: DNEG

text: DNEG Animation (formerly known as DNEG Feature Animation until April 2022) was founded in 2014 to provide animation services alongside IP creators and filmmakers for both feature and episodic animated projects. Its first project was the short film "Mr. Spam Gets a New Hat", directed by William Joyce, and its feature film was "Ron's Gone Wrong", co-produced with Locksmith Animation for 20th Century Studios, both released in 2021. DNEG has recently produced the Netflix television special "Entergalactic" and currently has five major animated projects in production, including "Under the Boardwalk" for Paramount Animation, an adaptation of "The Great Gatsby", "Garfield", for which DNEG is a producer alongside Alcon Entertainment for Sony Pictures, "That Christmas", a co-production with Locksmith Animation, and "Nimona", an adaptation of the webcomic of the same name by ND Stevenson for Netflix and Annapurna Pictures; in the production of "Nimona", DNEG would take over animation from Blue Sky Studios after the company was shut down by then-owner The Walt Disney Company before their production was completed.


title: DNEG

text: DNEG’s ReDefine division was launched in 2019 to provide creative visual effects and animation services both to expanding international markets and to filmmakers and streaming companies.


title: DNEG

text: DNEG's stereo conversion team (formerly Prime Focus World) was the first in the world to convert a full Hollywood film from 2-D to 3-D and has since become one of the largest stereo conversion companies in the motion picture industry.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit tabletop portable video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Released in 1995, it was marketed as the first console capable of displaying stereoscopic "3D" graphics. The player uses the console like a head-mounted display, placing the head against the eyepiece to see a red monochrome display. The games use a parallax effect to create the illusion of depth. Sales failed to meet targets, and Nintendo ceased distribution and game development in 1996, having released only 22 games for the system.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Development of the Virtual Boy lasted four years and began under the project name VR32. Nintendo entered a licensing agreement to use a stereoscopic LED eyepiece technology which had been developed since the 1980s by US company Reflection Technology. It also built a factory in China to be used only for Virtual Boy manufacturing. Over the course of development, the console technology was downscaled due to high costs and potential health concerns, and an increasing amount of resources were reallocated to the development of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's next home console. Lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto had little involvement with the Virtual Boy software. The Virtual Boy was pushed to market in an unfinished state in 1995 to focus on the Nintendo 64.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops. Its failure has been attributed to its high price, monochrome display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, poor ergonomics, lack of true portability, and health concerns. Stereoscopic technology in video game consoles reemerged in later years to more success, including Nintendo's 3DS handheld console. , it is Nintendo's lowest-selling standalone console and the only to have less than 1 million units sold, seconded by the Wii U's 13.6 million units.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Since 1985, a red LED eyepiece display technology called Scanned Linear Array was developed by Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. (RTI). The company produced a stereoscopic head-tracking prototype called the Private Eye, featuring a tank game. Seeking funding and partnerships by which to develop it into a commercial technology, RTI demonstrated Private Eye to the consumer electronics market, including Mattel and Hasbro. Sega declined the technology, due to its single-color display and concerns about motion sickness.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Nintendo enthusiastically received the Private Eye, as led by Gunpei Yokoi, the general manager of Nintendo's R&D1 and the inventor of the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld consoles. He saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator and to "encourage more creativity" in games. Codenaming the project "VR32", Nintendo entered into an exclusive agreement with Reflection Technology, Inc. to license the technology for its displays. While Nintendo's Research & Development 3 division (R&D3) was focused on developing the Nintendo 64, the other two engineering units were free to experiment with new product ideas.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing plant in China, Nintendo worked to turn its VR32 vision into an affordable and health-conscious console design. Yokoi retained RTI's choice of red LED because it was the cheapest, and because unlike a backlit LCD, its perfect blackness could achieve a more immersive sense of infinite depth. RTI and Nintendo said a color LCD system would have been prohibitively expensive, retailing for more than . A color LCD system was also said to have caused "jumpy images in tests". With ongoing concerns about motion sickness, the risk of developing lazy eye conditions in young children, and Japan's new Product Liability Act of 1995, Nintendo eliminated the head tracking functionality and converted its headmounted goggle design into a stationary, heavy, precision steel-shielded, tabletop form factor conformant to the recommendation of the Schepens Eye Research Institute.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Several were used to show the Virtual Boy's capabilities. "Driving Demo" is one of the more advanced demos; its 30-second clip shows a first-person view of driving by road signs and palm trees. This demo was shown at E3 and CES in 1995. The startup screen of the Virtual Boy prototype was shown at Shoshinkai 1994. A "very confident" projection of "sales in Japan of 3 million hardware units and 14 million software units as of March 1996" was given to the press. The demo of what would have been a "Star Fox" game showed an Arwing doing various spins and motions. Cinematic camera angles were a key element, as they are in "Star Fox 2". It was shown at E3 and CES in 1995.


title: Virtual Boy

text: As a result of increasing competition for internal resources alongside the flagship Nintendo 64, and little involvement from lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Virtual Boy software was developed without Nintendo's full attention. According to David Sheff's book "Game Over", the increasingly reluctant Yokoi never intended for the increasingly downscaled Virtual Boy to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo pushed it to market so that it could focus development resources on its next console, the Nintendo 64.


title: Virtual Boy

text: "The New York Times" previewed the Virtual Boy on November 13, 1994. The console was officially announced via press release the next day, November 14. Nintendo promised that Virtual Boy would "totally immerse players into their own private universe". Initial press releases and interviews about the system focused on its technological capabilities, avoiding discussion of the actual games that would be released. The system was demonstrated the next day at Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1994 trade show. Nintendo of America showed the Virtual Boy at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, 1995.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Even with cost-saving measures in place, Nintendo priced the Virtual Boy at a relatively high . Though slightly less expensive and significantly less powerful than a home console, this was considerably more costly than the Game Boy handheld. With seemingly more advanced graphics than Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was not intended to replace the handheld in Nintendo's product line, as use of the Virtual Boy requires a steady surface and completely blocks the player's peripheral vision. "Design News" described the Virtual Boy as the logical evolution of the View-Master 3D image viewer.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy was released on July 21, 1995, in Japan and on August 16, 1995, in North America with the launch games "Mario's Tennis", "Red Alarm", "Teleroboxer", and "Galactic Pinball". It was not released in PAL markets. In North America, Nintendo shipped "Mario's Tennis" with every Virtual Boy sold, as a pack-in game. Nintendo had initially projected sales of 3 million consoles and 14 million games. The system arrived later than other 32-bit systems like PlayStation, 3DO, and Saturn, but at a lower price.


title: Virtual Boy

text: At the system's release, Nintendo of America projected hardware sales of 1.5 million units and software sales numbering 2.5 million by the end of the year. Nintendo had shipped 350,000 units of the Virtual Boy by December 1995, around three and a half months after its North American release. The system is number 5 on "GamePro"s "Top 10 Worst Selling Consoles of All Time" list in 2007.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy had a short market timespan following its disappointing sales. The last game officially released for the Virtual Boy was "3D Tetris", released on March 22, 1996. More games were announced for the system at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 1996, but these games were never released. The Virtual Boy was discontinued that year without any announcement. In June 1996, Nintendo reported to "Famitsu" worldwide sales of 770,000 Virtual Boy units, including 140,000 in Japan. "Next Generation" reported that 13,000 Virtual Boy units were sold in December 1996.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Nintendo extensively advertised the Virtual Boy and claimed to have spent on early promotional activities. Advertising promoted the system as a paradigm shift from past consoles; some pieces used cavemen to indicate a historical evolution, while others utilized psychedelic imagery. Nintendo targeted an older audience with advertisements for the Virtual Boy, shifting away from the traditional child-focused approach it had employed in the past. Nintendo portrayed the system as a type of virtual reality, as its name indicates. Nintendo also focused on the technological aspects of the new console in its press releases, neglecting to detail specific games.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Challenged by showing 3-dimensional gameplay on 2-dimensional advertisements, the company partnered with Blockbuster and NBC. A campaign promoted NBC's late 1995 lineup alongside the Virtual Boy. American viewers were encouraged via television advertisements on NBC to rent the console for $10 at a local Blockbuster. This affordable demonstration provided 750,000 consoles for rent, some in a clamshell Blockbuster case. Upon returning the unit, renters received a coupon for $10 off its purchase from any store. The promotion included 3,000 Blockbuster locations, and sweepstakes with prizes including trips to see the taping of NBC shows. The popular rental system proved harmful to the Virtual Boy's long-term success, allowing gamers to see just how non-immersive the console was. By mid-1996, Blockbuster was selling its Virtual Boy units at $50 each. The marketing campaign overall was commonly thought of as a failure.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The CPU is an NEC V810 32-bit RISC chip, making the Virtual Boy Nintendo's first 32-bit system. The Virtual Boy system uses a pair of 1×224 linear arrays (one per eye) and rapidly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. These mirrors vibrate back and forth at a very high speed, thus the mechanical humming noise from inside the unit. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge has a yes/no option to automatically pause every 15–30 minutes so that the player may take a break before any injuries come to the eyes. One speaker per ear provides the player with stereo audio.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy is the first video game console that was supposed to be capable of displaying stereoscopic "3D" graphics, marketed as a form of virtual reality. Whereas most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen, the Virtual Boy creates an illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax. Like using a head-mounted display, the user looks into an eyeshade made of neoprene on the front of the machine, and then an eyeglass-style projector allows viewing of the monochromatic red image.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The display consists of two 2-bit (four shade) monochrome red screens of 384×224 pixels and a frame rate of approximately 50.27 Hz. It uses an oscillating mirror to transform a single column of 224 red LEDs into a full field of pixels. Nintendo claimed that a color display would have made "jumpy" images and have been too expensive. A color display would have required red, green, and blue LEDs; blue LEDs were then considerably expensive. This, plus the other drawbacks, influenced the decision for monochrome.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy is meant for the player to be seated at a table, and Nintendo promised but did not release a harness to wear while standing.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy's heavy emphasis on three-dimensional movement requires the controller to operate along a Z-axis. Its controller is an attempt to implement dual digital D-pads to control elements in the 3D environment. The controller is shaped like an "M", like a Nintendo 64 controller. The player holds onto either side of the controller which has a unique extendable power supply that slides onto the back, housing the system's six AA batteries. The batteries can be substituted with a wall adapter, via a "slide-on" attachment for constant power.


title: Virtual Boy

text: In more traditional 2-dimensional games, the two directional pads are interchangeable. For others with a more 3D environment, like "Red Alarm", "3D Tetris", or "Teleroboxer", each pad controls a different feature. The symmetry of the controller also allows left-handed gamers to reverse the controls, as does the Atari Lynx.


title: Virtual Boy

text: During development, Nintendo promised the ability to link systems for competitive play. A Virtual Boy link cable was being worked on at Nintendo as late as the third quarter of 1996. The system's EXT (extension) port, located on the underside of the system below the controller port, was never officially supported because no "official" multiplayer games were ever published. Two games were intended to use the EXT port for multiplayer play, but the multiplayer features were removed from "Waterworld" and "Faceball" was canceled.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Nintendo initially showcased three launch games and planned two or three per month thereafter. Given the system's short lifespan, only 22 games were actually released. Of them, 19 games were released in the Japanese market, and 14 were released in North America. Third party support was extremely limited compared to previous Nintendo platforms. According to Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had dictated that only a select few third-party developers be shown the Virtual Boy hardware before its formal unveiling, to limit the risk of poor-quality software appearing on the system.


title: Virtual Boy

text: When asked if Virtual Boy games were going to be available for download on the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said he could not answer, as he was unfamiliar with the platform. He noted that, given his lack of familiarity, he would be hard-pressed to make the case for the inclusion of the games on the Virtual Console.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The hobbyist community at "Planet Virtual Boy" has developed Virtual Boy software. Two previously unreleased games, "Bound High" and "Niko-Chan Battle" (the Japanese version of "Faceball") were released.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Virtual Boy garnered negative critical reviews and was a commercial failure. It failed for several reasons including "its high price, the discomfort caused by play [...] and what was widely judged to have been a poorly handled marketing campaign".


title: Virtual Boy

text: Gamers who previewed the system at the Shoshinkai 1994 trade show complained that the "Mario" demo was not realistic enough, was not in full color, and didn't motion-track the image when players turn their heads. In the lead editorial of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" following the show, Ed Semrad predicted that the Virtual Boy would have poor launch sales due to the monochrome screen, lack of true portability, unimpressive lineup of games, and the price, which he argued was as low as it could get given the hardware but still too expensive for the experience. "Next Generation"s editors were also dubious of the Virtual Boy's prospects after the show, and concluded their article on the system by commenting, "But who will buy it? It's not portable, it's awkward to use, it's 100% antisocial (unlike multiplayer SNES/Genesis games), it's too expensive and – most importantly – the 'VR' (i.e. 3D effect) doesn't add to the game at all: it's just a novelty."


title: Virtual Boy

text: Following its release, reviews of the Virtual Boy tended to praise its novelty but questioned its ultimate purpose and longtime viability. "The Los Angeles Times" described the gameplay as being "at once familiar and strange". The column praised the quality of motion and immersive graphics but considered the hardware tedious to use and non-portable. In a later column, the same reviewer found the system to be somewhat asocial, but held hope for its future. Reviewing the system shortly after its North American launch, "Next Generation" said, "Unusual and innovative, the Virtual Boy can be seen as a gamble in the same way that the Game Boy was, but it's a lot harder to see the VB succeeding to the same world-conquering extent that the Game Boy did." They elaborated that while the sharp display and unique 3D effect are impressive, aspects such as the monochrome display and potential vision damage to young gamers severely limit the system's appeal. They added that the software library was decent, but failed to capitalize on Nintendo's best-selling franchises because "Zelda" and "Metroid" games were absent, the "Mario" games were not in the same style as the series's most successful installments, and it lacked a system seller to compare with the Game Boy's "Tetris".


title: Virtual Boy

text: Though Nintendo had promised a virtual reality experience, the monochrome display limits the Virtual Boy's potential for immersion. Reviewers often considered the 3-dimensional features a gimmick, added to games that were essentially 2- or even 1-dimensional. "The Washington Post" said that even when a game gives the impression of 3-dimensionality, it suffers from "hollow vector graphics". Yokoi, the system's inventor, said the system did best with action and puzzle games, although those types of games provided only minimal immersion. Multiple critics lamented the absence of head-tracking in the Virtual Boy hardware. Critics found that, as a result, players were unable to immerse themselves in the game worlds of Virtual Boy games. Instead, they interacted simply via a controller, in the manner of any traditional 2-dimensional game. Boyer said the console "struggles to merge the two distinct media forms of home consoles and virtual reality devices". Though the device employs some basic virtual reality techniques, it does so like the traditional home console with no bodily feedback incorporated into gameplay.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Many reviewers complained of painful and frustrating physiological symptoms when playing the Virtual Boy. Bill Frischling, writing for "The Washington Post", experienced "dizziness, nausea and headaches". Reviewers attributed the problems to both the monochromatic display and uncomfortable ergonomics. Several prominent scientists concluded that the long-term side effects could be more serious, and articles published in magazines such as "Electronic Engineering Times" and CMP Media's "TechWeb" speculated that using any immersive headset such as the Virtual Boy could cause sickness, flashbacks, and even permanent brain damage. Nintendo, in the years after Virtual Boy's demise, has been frank about its failure. Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo of America, said flatly that the Virtual Boy "just failed".


title: Virtual Boy

text: According to "Game Over", Nintendo blamed the machine's faults directly on its creator, Gunpei Yokoi. The commercial failure of the Virtual Boy was reportedly a contributing factor to Yokoi's withdrawal from Nintendo, although he had already planned to retire years prior and then finished the successful Game Boy Pocket, which was released shortly before his departure. According to his Nintendo and Koto colleague Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at age 50 to do as he pleased but had simply delayed it. Nintendo held that Yokoi's departure was "absolutely coincidental" to the market performance of any Nintendo hardware. "The New York Times" maintained that Yokoi kept a close relationship with Nintendo. After leaving Nintendo, Yokoi founded his own company, Koto, and collaborated with Bandai to create the WonderSwan, a handheld system competing with the Game Boy.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The commercial failure of the Virtual Boy reportedly did little to alter Nintendo's development approach and focus on innovation. The console's focus on peripherals and haptic technology reemerged in later years. The original inventor, Reflection Technology, Inc., was reportedly financially "devastated" by the Virtual Boy's performance, with dwindling operations by 1997.


title: Virtual Boy

text: The Nintendo 3DS console was launched in 2011, as a handheld gaming console with autostereoscopic 3D visuals, without any special glasses. Prior to launch, Shigeru Miyamoto discussed the Virtual Boy. He said it renders wireframe graphics, but its effects are generally used for two-dimensional games with depth-separated planes. He stated that the graphics are not as appealing, and while developing the Nintendo 64, he had ruled out the use of wireframe graphics as too sparse to draw player characters. Finally, he stated that he perceived the Virtual Boy as a novelty that should not have used the Nintendo license so prominently.


title: Virtual Boy

text: In February 2016, Tatsumi Kimishima stated that Nintendo was "looking into" virtual reality but also explained that it would take more time and effort for them to assess the technology, and in a February 2017 interview with Nikkei, he stated that the company was "studying" VR, and would add it to the Nintendo Switch once it is figured out how users can play for long durations without any issues. Nintendo introduced a VR accessory for the Switch as part of Labo, a line of player-assembled cardboard toys leveraging the console's hardware and Joy-Con controllers. In this case, the console is used as a head-mounted display for the headset.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Hobbyists adapted Virtual Boy to other displays. Emulation enabled modern stereoscopic goggles such as Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR in 2016 and Oculus Rift in 2018. In 2018, hobbyist Furrtek released a board that replaces the display circuitry, allowing the Virtual Boy to be played on a VGA monitor or television set.


title: Virtual Boy

text: Nintendo has referenced the Virtual Boy in other games, such as "Tomodachi Life"—where a trailer for the life simulation game included a scene of several Mii characters worshipping the Virtual Boy. In "Luigi's Mansion 3", Luigi uses a device by Professor E. Gadd known as the "Virtual Boo" to access maps and other information in-game (succeeding the use of devices referencing the Game Boy Color and first-generation Nintendo DS in previous installments). Its menus use a red and black color scheme, while E. Gadd optimistically boasts that the device would "fly off the shelves".


title: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

text: MD, NJ, IL, HI, WA, MA, DC, VT, CA, RI, NY, CT, CO, DE, NM, OR


text: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome. , it has been adopted by states and the District of Columbia. These states have electoral votes, which is of the Electoral College and of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.


text: Certain legal questions may affect implementation of the compact. Some legal observers believe that the compact will require explicit congressional consent under the of the U.S. Constitution, or that states have the plenary power to appoint presidential electors as prescribed by the compact under the . Other legal observers disagree that the power of states is broad enough to appoint their electors in accordance with the compact, and that the Electoral College cannot be altered to appoint presidential electors in accordance with the national popular vote except by a constitutional amendment.


text: Taking the form of an interstate compact, the agreement would go into effect among participating states only after they collectively represent an absolute majority of votes (currently at least 270) in the Electoral College. Once in effect, in each presidential election the participating states would award all of their electoral votes to the candidate with the largest national popular vote total across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. As a result, that candidate would win the presidency by securing a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Until the compact's conditions are met, all states award electoral votes in their current manner.


text: The compact would modify the way participating states implement of the U.S. Constitution, which requires each state legislature to define a method to appoint its electors to vote in the Electoral College. The Constitution does not mandate any particular legislative scheme for selecting electors, and instead vests state legislatures with the exclusive power to choose how to allocate their states' electors (although systems that violate the 14th Amendment, which mandates equal protection of the law and prohibits racial discrimination, are prohibited). States have chosen various methods of allocation over the years, with regular changes in the nation's early decades. Today, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) award all their electoral votes to the single candidate with the most votes statewide (the so-called "winner-take-all" system). Maine and Nebraska currently award one electoral vote to the winner in each congressional district and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner.


text: The compact would no longer be in effect should the total number of electoral votes held by the participating states fall below the threshold required, which could occur due to withdrawal of one or more states, changes due to the decennial congressional re-apportionment or an increase in the size of Congress, for example by admittance of a 51st state. The compact mandates a July 20 deadline in presidential election years, six months before Inauguration Day, to determine whether the agreement is in effect for that particular election. Any withdrawal by a participating state after that deadline will not become effective until the next President is confirmed.


text: The project has been supported by editorials in newspapers, including "The New York Times", the "Chicago Sun-Times", the "Los Angeles Times", "The Boston Globe", and the Minneapolis "Star Tribune", arguing that the existing system discourages voter turnout and leaves emphasis on only a few states and a few issues, while a popular election would equalize voting power. Others have argued against it, including the "Honolulu Star-Bulletin". Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, in an opinion piece in "The Wall Street Journal", called the project an "urban power grab" that would shift politics entirely to urban issues in high population states and allow lower caliber candidates to run. A collection of readings pro and con has been assembled by the League of Women Voters. Some of the most common points of debate are detailed below:


text: Certain founders conceived of the Electoral College as a deliberative body which would weigh the inputs of the states, but not be bound by them, in selecting the president, and would therefore serve to protect the country from the election of a person who is unfit to be president. However, the Electoral College has never served such a role in practice. From 1796 onward, presidential electors have acted as "rubber stamps" for their parties' nominees. As of 2020, no election outcome has been determined by an elector deviating from the will of their state. Journalist and commentator Peter Beinart has cited the election of Donald Trump, who some, he notes, view as unfit, as evidence that the Electoral College does not perform a protective function. Furthermore, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws to prevent such "faithless electors", and such laws were upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2020 in "Chiafalo v. Washington". The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact does not eliminate the Electoral College or affect faithless elector laws; it merely changes how electors are pledged by the participating states.


text: Under the current system, campaign focus – as measured by spending, visits, and attention paid to regional or state issues – is largely limited to the few swing states whose electoral outcomes are competitive, with politically "solid" states mostly ignored by the campaigns. The adjacent maps illustrate the amount spent on advertising and the number of visits to each state, relative to population, by the two major-party candidates in the last stretch of the 2004 presidential campaign. Supporters of the compact contend that a national popular vote would encourage candidates to campaign with equal effort for votes in competitive and non-competitive states alike. Critics of the compact argue that candidates would have less incentive to focus on states with smaller populations or fewer urban areas, and would thus be less motivated to address rural issues.


text: Opponents of the compact have raised concerns about the handling of close or disputed outcomes. National Popular Vote contends that an election being decided based on a disputed tally is far "less" likely under the NPVIC, which creates one large nationwide pool of voters, than under the current system, in which the national winner may be determined by an extremely small margin in any one of the fifty-one smaller statewide tallies. However, the national popular vote can be closer than the vote tally within any one state. In the event of an exact tie in the nationwide tally, NPVIC member states will award their electors to the winner of the popular vote in their state. Under the NPVIC, each state will continue to handle disputes and statewide recounts as governed by their own laws. The NPVIC does not include any provision for a nationwide recount, though Congress has the authority to create such a provision.


text: Pete du Pont argues that "Mr. Gore's 540,000-vote margin [in the 2000 election] amounted to 3.1 votes in each of the country's 175,000 precincts. 'Finding' three votes per precinct in urban areas is not a difficult thing...". However, National Popular Vote contends that altering the outcome via electoral fraud would be more difficult under a national popular vote than under the current system, due to the greater number of total votes that would likely need to be changed: currently, a close election may be determined by the outcome in just "one" "tipping-point state", and the margin in that state is likely to be "far" smaller than the nationwide margin, due to the smaller pool of voters at the state level, and the fact that several states may have close results.


text: Some supporters and opponents of the NPVIC believe it gives one party an advantage relative to the current Electoral College system. Former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont, a Republican, has argued that the compact would be an "urban power grab" and benefit Democrats. However, Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, wrote that Republicans "need" the compact, citing what he believes to be the center-right nature of the American electorate.


text: A statistical analysis by "FiveThirtyEight"'s Nate Silver of all presidential elections from 1864 to 2016 (see adjacent chart) found that the Electoral College has not consistently favored one major party or the other, and that any advantage in the Electoral College does not tend to last long, noting that "there's almost no correlation between which party has the Electoral College advantage in one election and which has it four years later." Although in all four elections since 1876 in which the winner lost the popular vote, the Republican became president, Silver's analysis shows that such splits are about equally likely to favor either major party. A popular vote-Electoral College split favoring the Democrat John Kerry nearly occurred in 2004.


text: "New Yorker" essayist Hendrik Hertzberg also concluded that the NPVIC would benefit neither party, noting that historically both Republicans and Democrats have been successful in winning the popular vote in presidential elections.


text: There is some debate over whether the Electoral College favors small- or large-population states. Those who argue that the College favors low-population states point out that such states have proportionally more electoral votes relative to their populations. In the least-populous states, with three electors, this results in voters having 143% greater voting power than they would under purely proportional allocation, while in the most populous state, California, voters' power is 16% smaller than under proportional allocation. In contrast, the NPVIC would give equal weight to each voter's ballot, regardless of what state they live in. Others, however, believe that since most states award electoral votes on a winner-takes-all system (the "unit rule"), the potential of populous states to shift greater numbers of electoral votes gives them more clout than would be expected from their electoral vote count alone.


text: Opponents of a national popular vote contend that the Electoral College is a fundamental component of the federal system established by the Constitutional Convention. Specifically, the Connecticut Compromise established a bicameral legislature – with proportional representation of the states in the House of Representatives and equal representation of the states in the Senate – as a compromise between less populous states fearful of having their interests dominated and voices drowned out by larger states, and larger states which viewed anything other than proportional representation as an affront to principles of democratic representation. The ratio of the populations of the most and least populous states is far greater currently (68.50 ) than when the Connecticut Compromise was adopted (7.35 as of the 1790 Census), exaggerating the non-proportional aspect of the compromise allocation.


text: Three governors who have vetoed NPVIC legislation––Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Linda Lingle of Hawaii, and Steve Sisolak of Nevada––objected to the compact on the grounds that it could require their states' electoral votes to be awarded to a candidate who did not win a majority in their state. (California and Hawaii have since enacted laws joining the compact.) Supporters of the compact counter that under a national popular vote system, state-level majorities are irrelevant; in all states, votes contribute to the nationwide tally, which determines the winner. Individual votes combine to directly determine the outcome, while the intermediary measure of state-level majorities is rendered obsolete.


text: Some opponents of the compact contend that it would lead to a proliferation of third-party candidates, such that an election could be won with a plurality of as little as 15% of the vote. However, evidence from U.S. gubernatorial and other races in which a plurality results in a win do not bear out this suggestion. In the 975 general elections for Governor in the U.S. between 1948 and 2011, 90% of winners received more than 50% of the vote, 99% received more than 40%, and all received more than 35%. Duverger's law supports the contention that plurality elections do not generally create a proliferation of minor candidacies with significant vote shares.


text: The of the United States Constitution states that "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State". In a report released in October 2019, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) cited the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in "Virginia v. Tennessee" (1893)—reaffirmed in "U.S. Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Commission" (1978) and "Cuyler v. Adams" (1981)—as stating that the words "agreement" and "compact" are synonyms, and that explicit congressional consent of interstate compacts is not required for agreements "which the United States can have no possible objection or have any interest in interfering with". However, the report asserted, the Court required explicit congressional consent for interstate compacts that are "directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States"—meaning where the vertical balance of power between the federal government and state governments is altered in favor of state governments.


text: The CRS report states that "Whether the NPV initiative requires congressional consent under the Compact Clause first requires a determination as to whether NPV even constitutes an interstate compact." Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, one of the compact's framers, has argued that because the NPVIC does not create a "new interstate governmental apparatus" and because "cooperating states acting together would be exercising no more power than they are entitled to wield individually", the NPVIC probably does not constitute an interstate compact and cannot contravene the Compact Clause. Conversely, the CRS report cites the Court's opinion in "Northeast Bancorp v. Federal Reserve Board of Governors" (1985) as suggesting that a requirement of a new interstate governmental entity is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for an agreement to qualify as being an interstate compact under the Compact Clause. Instead, the CRS report cites the Court's opinions in "Virginia v. Tennessee" and "Northeast Bancorp" as stating that any agreement between two or more states that "cover[s] all stipulations affecting the conduct or claims of the parties", prohibits members from "modify[ing] or repeal[ing] [the agreement] unilaterally", and requires "'reciprocation' of mutual obligations" constitutes an interstate compact. Noting that the NPVIC meets all of those requirements, the CRS report concludes that "the initiative can be described as an interstate compact."


text: As part of concerns about whether the NPVIC would shift power from the federal government to state governments, at least two legal observers have suggested that the NPVIC would require explicit congressional approval because it would remove the possibility of contingent elections for President being conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives under the 12th and 20th Amendments. The CRS report notes that the outcomes of only two presidential elections (1800 and 1824) have been determined by a contingent election, and whether the loss of such elections would be a "de minimis" diminishment of federal power is unresolved by the relevant case law. The report references "U.S. Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Commission" as stating that the "pertinent inquiry [with respect to the Compact Clause] is one of potential, rather than actual, impact on federal supremacy" in that the potential erosion of an enumerated power of the U.S. House of Representatives could arguably require congressional approval. Proponents of the compact counter that if removing the possibility of contingent elections is grounds for unconstitutionality, then Congress setting the size of the House at an odd number, as it did in 1911 (resulting in an odd number of electors until 1961), was also unconstitutional because it precluded the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College between presidential candidates.


text: The CRS report goes on to cite the Supreme Court's rulings in "Florida v. Georgia" (1855) and in "Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado" (2018) as recognizing that explicit congressional consent is also required for interstate compacts that alter the horizontal balance of power amongst state governments. University of Colorado Law School professor Jennifer S. Hendricks and labor lawyer Bradley T. Turflinger have argued that the NPVIC would not alter the power of non-compacting state governments because all state governments would retain their right to select the electors of their choosing. Other legal observers have argued that the power of non-compacting states would be altered because, under the NPVIC, a state's power in determining the outcomes of presidential elections would be changed from the percentage of electors it has in the Electoral College to the state's percentage of the popular vote, rendering the right of non-compacting state governments to appoint their own electors "pro forma" as the Electoral College outcome would be determined "ex ante" rather than "ex post".


text: Additionally, Ian J. Drake, an associate professor of political science and law at Montclair State University, has argued that because "Cuyler v. Adams" held that congressional approval of interstate compacts makes them federal laws, Congress can only approve interstate compacts without violating the Supremacy Clause of Article VI if it has the enumerated or implied powers to create such laws itself. Drake argues that Congress cannot consent to the NPVIC because Congress has no legislative power to alter the Electoral College under , and citing the Supreme Court's ruling in "McPherson v. Blacker" (1892), Drake notes that neither enumerates nor implies any powers to or of Congress to create laws stipulating the mode of appointment by which states appoint their presidential electors and permits Congress to only set the date and time of presidential elections. Drake and at least five other legal observers have argued that to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote may only be done by a constitutional amendment as outlined in Article V.


text: The organizers of NPV Inc. dispute that a constitutional amendment is necessary for altering the current method of electing the President because the NPVIC would not abolish the Electoral College, and because states would only be using the plenary power to choose the method by which they appoint their electors that is already delegated to them under the . Nonetheless, the NPV Inc. organizers have stated that they plan to seek congressional approval if the compact is approved by a sufficient number of states. Correspondingly, Ian J. Drake argues that approval of the NPVIC by Congress would meet none of the non-justiciability requirements specified by the Supreme Court in "Baker v. Carr" (1962) to constitute a political question, and the CRS report concludes in agreement with Drake that if the NPVIC were to be enacted by the necessary number of states, it would likely become the source of considerable litigation, and it is likely that the Supreme Court will be involved in any resolution of the constitutional issues surrounding it.


text: Proponents of the compact, such as law professors Akhil and Vikram Amar (the compact's original framers), as well as U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland's 8th congressional district (a former law professor), have argued that states have the plenary power to appoint electors in accordance with the national popular vote under the , which states that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". Vikram Amar and other legal observers have also cited the Supreme Court's rulings in "McPherson v. Blacker" (1892) and "Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission" (2015) as recognizing that states have wide discretion in selecting the method by which they appoint their electors.


text: However, the CRS report cites the Court's opinions in "Williams v. Rhodes" (1968) and "Oregon v. Mitchell" (1970) that struck down state laws concerning the appointment of electors that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and concludes that a state's power to select the method by which its electors are appointed is not absolute. Citing "Bush v. Gore" (2000) as stating that state governments cannot "value one person's vote over that of another" in vote tabulation, Willamette University College of Law professor Norman R. Williams has argued that the NPVIC would violate the Equal Protection Clause because it does not require and cannot compel uniform laws across both compacting and non-compacting states that regulate vote tabulation, voting machinery usage, voter registration, mail-in voting, election recounts, and felony and mental disability disenfranchisement. The NPV Inc. organizers counter that the text of the 14th Amendment states that "No state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws", that there is no precedent for claims of interstate violations of the Equal Protection Clause, and that because "Bush v. Gore" was addressing intrastate rather than interstate non-uniformity, the NPVIC does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. On December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court issued an order dismissing "Texas v. Pennsylvania" on the basis that the plaintiff state (Texas) lacked standing under the Original Jurisdiction Clause of to sue the defendant states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin) due to the plaintiff state failing to demonstrate a judicially cognizable interest in how any other state conducts its elections.


text: Robert Natelson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Independence Institute in constitutional jurisprudence and a member of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council's board of scholars, has argued that a state's power to appoint its electors cannot be absolute because otherwise states would be permitted to appoint their electors in a manner that would violate public trust (e.g. by holding an auction to sell their electoral votes to the highest bidder). Natelson goes on to argue that a state's power to select electors must also be compatible "in a substantive sense" with the Electoral College composition framework in the Elections Clause, and by extension, the , , and the 17th Amendment, that gives less populous states disproportionate weight in selecting the President. According to Natelson, the NPVIC would be incompatible with the Electoral College composition framework as stipulated by the Elections Clause "as a substantive matter" (as opposed to "as a formal matter") because it would "de facto" eliminate the disproportionate weight that less populous states have in selecting the President.


text: "Northwestern University Law Review" published a comment written by Northwestern University School of Law student Kristin Feeley that argued that the principle of symmetric federalism in the Guarantee Clause of that states "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" is violated by the NPVIC because "no state [may] legislate for any other state. Placing no constitutional limit on state power over electors ... creates the ... potential for [compacting] states to form a superstate and render the [non-compacting] states irrelevant in the election of the President." Conversely, Bradley T. Turflinger, citing "New York v. United States" (1992), has argued that the federal government would be in violation of the Guarantee Clause if it required congressional approval of the NPVIC because it would encroach upon state governments' sovereignty over their own legislative processes (i.e. the power of state legislatures to prescribe how presidential electors are appointed under the Elections Clause) and make state government officials (i.e. presidential electors) accountable to the federal government rather than their local electorates.


text: The CRS report notes that while the Court's opinion in "McPherson v. Blacker" emphasized that the variety of state laws that existed shortly after the ratification of the Constitution indicates that state legislatures have multiple alternative "modes of choosing the electors", no state at the time of the ratification appointed their electors based on the results of the national popular vote. Citing the Court's opinion in "U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton" (1995) that reaffirmed the Court's ruling in "Powell v. McCormack" (1969) as interpreting analogous language, the CRS report and Norman R. Williams note that the Court concluded that states cannot exercise their delegated authorities over the election of members of Congress under the in a way that would "effect a fundamental change in the constitutional structure" and that such change "must come not by legislation adopted either by Congress or by an individual State, but rather—as have other important changes in the electoral process—through the amendment procedures set forth in Article V."


text: In correspondence to the Court's analysis in "Thornton" of the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the history of state-imposed term limits and additional qualifications for members of Congress, Williams notes that the Convention explicitly rejected a proposal to elect the President by a national popular vote, and that all of the systems adopted by state legislatures to appoint electors in the wake of the ratification of the Constitution (discretionary appointment by the state legislature or state governor, popular election by electoral district, statewide winner-takes-all election) appointed electors directly or indirectly in accordance with voter sentiment within their respective states and not on the basis of votes cast outside of their states. Likewise, in correspondence to the Court's analysis of congressional elections history, Williams notes that no state has ever appointed their electors in accordance with the national popular vote—even though every state since the 1880 election has appointed its electors upon the results of a poll, which would enable the statewide vote counts to be aggregated. The CRS report and Williams also note that the Court in "McPherson v. Blacker" was upholding a law passed by the Michigan Legislature to appoint its electors by popular vote in electoral districts, and in contrast to the NPVIC, in accordance with voter sentiment within Michigan rather than the country as a whole.


text: Williams concludes that because the Court's decision in "McPherson" to uphold the Michigan law followed a comparable analysis of the Constitutional Convention debates and, in the words of the Court, of the "contemporaneous practical exposition of the Constitution", the scope of states' Article II authority does not extend to allowing states to appoint presidential electors in accordance with the national popular vote. The NPV Inc. organizers counter that the Constitutional Convention also rejected proposals having electors selected by popular vote in districts and having state legislatures appoint electors directly, and argue instead that the language of Article II does not prohibit the use of any of the methods that were rejected by the Convention. Due to a lack of a precise precedent, the CRS report concludes that whether states are allowed to appoint their electors in accordance with the national popular vote under Article II is an open question and will likely remain unresolved until a future Court ruling in a case challenging the constitutionality of the NPVIC.


text: In 2013, Bloomberg Law editor Michael Brody argued that "the role of electors has yet to be defined by a court," and cited the Supreme Court ruling in "Ray v. Blair" (1952) as suggesting that the 12th Amendment does not require that electors must vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Brody argued that because the NPVIC binds only states and not electors, those electors could retain independent withdrawal power as faithless electors at the request of the compacting states, unless the compacting states adopt penalties or other statutes that bind the electors—which 11 of the 15 compacting states and the District of Columbia currently do, in addition to 21 other states.


text: On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the case "Chiafalo v. Washington" and the related case "Colorado Department of State v. Baca" that it is within a state's power to enforce laws that penalize faithless electors or allow for their removal and replacement. The decision reaffirmed the precedent from "McPherson v. Blacker" that the Elections Clause "'[conveys] the broadest power of determination' over who becomes an elector", as well as the precedent from "Ray v. Blair" that a state's power to appoint electors includes conditioning an elector's appointment to a pledge to vote for their nominating party's presidential nominee (i.e. the winner of the statewide popular vote). The ruling concludes that a state's power to condition elector appointments extends to binding the electors to their pledges upon pain of penalty, stating "Nothing in the Constitution expressly prohibits States from taking away presidential electors' voting discretion as Washington does." While not a direct ruling on the NPVIC, the ruling that states may bind their electors to the state's popular vote has been interpreted as a precedent that states may choose to bind their electors to the national popular vote via plenary appointment power.


text: However, the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Elena Kagan notes that while a state legislature's appointment power gives it far-reaching authority over its electors, "Checks on a State's power to appoint electors, or to impose conditions on an appointment, can theoretically come from anywhere in the Constitution", further noting that the states cannot select electors in a manner that would violate the Equal Protection Clause or adopt conditions for elector appointments that impose additional qualifications for presidential candidates (as the latter could conflict with the ). Likewise, in his concurring opinion, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas states that the "powers related to electors reside with States to the extent that the Constitution does not remove or restrict that power"; Thomas cites "Williams v. Rhodes" as stating that the powers reserved to the states concerning electors cannot "be exercised in such a way as to violate express constitutional commands." The majority opinion also states that "nothing in this opinion should be taken to permit the States to bind electors to a deceased candidate" after noting that more than one-third of the cumulative faithless elector votes in U.S. presidential elections history were cast during the 1872 election when Liberal Republican and Democratic Party nominee Horace Greeley died after the election polls were held and vote tabulations were completed by the states but before the Electoral College cast its ballots.


text: A 2008 "Columbia Law Review" article by Columbia Law School student David Gringer suggested that the NPVIC could potentially violate Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). However, in 2012, the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division declined to challenge California's entry into the NPVIC under Section 5 of the Act, and the October 2019 CRS report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Shelby County v. Holder" (2013), which invalidated Section 4(b) of the VRA, has rendered Section 5 currently inoperable. In response to Gringer's argument that the NPVIC would violate Section 2 of the VRA, FairVote's Rob Richie says that the NPVIC "treats all voters equally", and NPV Inc. has stated "The National Popular Vote bill manifestly would make every person's vote for President equal throughout the United States in an election to fill a single office (the Presidency). It is entirely consistent with the goal of the Voting Rights Act."


text: Public opinion surveys suggest that a majority or plurality of Americans support a popular vote for President. Gallup polls dating back to 1944 showed consistent majorities of the public supporting a direct vote. A 2007 "Washington Post" and Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 72% favored replacing the Electoral College with a direct election, including 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans, and 73% of independent voters.


text: A November 2016 Gallup poll following the 2016 U.S. presidential election showed that Americans' support for amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote fell to 49%, with 47% opposed. Republican support for replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote dropped significantly, from 54% in 2011 to 19% in 2016, which Gallup attributed to a partisan response to the 2016 result, where the Republican candidate Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. In March 2018, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 55% of Americans supported replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, with 41% opposed, but that a partisan divide remained in that support, as 75% of self-identified Democrats supported replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote, while only 32% of self-identified Republicans did. A September 2020 Gallup poll showed support for amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote rose to 61% with 38% opposed, similar to levels prior to the 2016 election, although the partisan divide continued with support from 89% of Democrats and 68% of independents, but only 23% of Republicans. An August 2022 Pew Research Center poll showed 63% support for a national popular vote versus 35% opposed, with support from 80% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans.


text: The Electoral College system was established by Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution, drafted in 1787. It "has been a source of discontent for more than 200 years." Over 700 proposals to reform or eliminate the system have been introduced in Congress, making it one of the most popular topics of constitutional reform. Electoral College reform and abolition has been advocated "by a long roster of mainstream political leaders with disparate political interests and ideologies." Proponents of these proposals argued that the electoral college system does not provide for direct democratic election, affords less-populous states an advantage, and allows a candidate to win the presidency without winning the most votes. Reform amendments were approved by two-thirds majorities in one branch of Congress six times in history. However, other than the 12th Amendment in 1804, none of these proposals have received the approval of two-thirds of both branches of Congress and three-fourths of the states required to amend the Constitution. The difficulty of amending the Constitution has always been the "most prominent structural obstacle" to reform efforts.


text: Since the 1940s, when modern scientific polling on the subject began, a majority of Americans have preferred changing the electoral college system. Between 1948 and 1979, Congress debated electoral college reform extensively, and hundreds of reform proposals were introduced in the House and Senate. During this period, Senate and House Judiciary Committees held hearings on 17 different occasions. Proposals were debated five times in the Senate and twice in the House, and approved by two-thirds majorities twice in the Senate and once in the House, but never at the same time. In the late 1960s and 1970s, over 65% of voters supported amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote, with support peaking at 80% in 1968, after Richard Nixon almost lost the popular vote while winning the Electoral College vote. A similar situation occurred again with Jimmy Carter's election in 1976; a poll taken weeks after the election found 73% support for eliminating the Electoral College by amendment. Carter himself proposed a Constitutional amendment that would include the abolition of the electoral college shortly after taking office in 1977. After a direct popular election amendment failed to pass the Senate in 1979 and prominent congressional advocates retired or were defeated in elections, electoral college reform subsided from public attention and the number of reform proposals in Congress dwindled.


text: The 2000 US presidential election produced the first "wrong winner" since 1888, with Al Gore winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College vote to George W. Bush. This "electoral misfire" sparked new studies and proposals from scholars and activists on electoral college reform, ultimately leading to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).


text: In 2001, "two provocative articles" were published by law professors suggesting paths to a national popular vote through state legislative action rather than constitutional amendment. The first, a paper by Northwestern University law professor Robert W. Bennett, suggested states could pressure Congress to pass a constitutional amendment by acting together to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Bennett noted that the 17th Amendment was passed only after states had enacted state-level reform measures unilaterally.


text: A few months later, Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar and his brother, University of California Hastings School of Law professor Vikram Amar, wrote a paper suggesting states could coordinate their efforts by passing uniform legislation under the and Compact Clause of the Constitution. The legislation could be structured to take effect only once enough states to control a majority of the Electoral College (270 votes) joined the compact, thereby guaranteeing that the national popular vote winner would also win the electoral college. Bennett and the Amar brothers "are generally credited as the intellectual godparents" of NPVIC.


text: Building on the work of Bennett and the Amar brothers, in 2006, John Koza, a computer scientist, former elector, and "longtime critic of the Electoral College", created the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), a formal interstate compact that linked and unified individual states' pledges to commit their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. NPVIC offered "a framework for building support one state at a time as well as a legal mechanism for enforcing states' commitments after the threshold of 270 had been reached." Compacts of this type had long existed to regulate interstate issues such as water rights, ports, and nuclear waste.


text: Koza, who had earned "substantial wealth" by co-inventing the scratchcard, had worked on lottery compacts such as the Tri-State Lottery with an election lawyer, Barry Fadem. To promote NPVIC, Koza, Fadem, and a group of former Democratic and Republican Senators and Representatives, formed a California 501(c)(4) non-profit, National Popular Vote Inc. (NPV, Inc.). NPV, Inc. published "Every Vote Equal", a detailed, "600-page tome" explaining and advocating for NPVIC, and a regular newsletter reporting on activities and encouraging readers to petition their governors and state legislators to pass NPVIC. NPV, Inc. also commissioned statewide opinion polls, organized educational seminars for legislators and "opinion makers", and hired lobbyists in almost every state seriously considering NPVIC legislation.


text: NPVIC was announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on February 23, 2006, with the endorsement of former US Senator Birch Bayh; Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause; Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote; and former US Representatives John Anderson and John Buchanan. NPV, Inc. announced it planned to introduce legislation in all 50 states and had already done so in Illinois. "To many observers, the NPVIC looked initially to be an implausible, long-shot approach to reform", but within months of the campaign's launch, several major newspapers including "The New York Times" and "Los Angeles Times", published favorable editorials. Shortly after the press conference, NPVIC legislation was introduced in five additional state legislatures, "most with bipartisan support". It passed in the Colorado Senate, and in both houses of the California legislature before being vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.


text: In 2007, NPVIC legislation was introduced in 42 states. It was passed by at least one legislative chamber in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Hawaii. Maryland became the first state to join the compact when Governor Martin O'Malley signed it into law on April 10, 2007.


text: NPVIC legislation has been introduced in all 50 states. , the NPVIC has been adopted by states and the District of Columbia; notably, no Republican governor has yet signed it into law. Together, they have electoral votes, which is of the Electoral College and of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.


text: In Nevada, the legislation passed both chambers in 2019, but was vetoed by Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on May 30, 2019. In Maine, the legislation also passed both chambers in 2019, but failed the additional enactment vote in the House. States where only one chamber has passed the legislation are Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Bills seeking to repeal the compact in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington have failed.


text: In Maine, an initiative to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact began collecting signatures on April 17, 2016. It failed to collect enough signatures to appear on the ballot. In Arizona, a similar initiative began collecting signatures on December 19, 2016, but failed to collect the required 150,642 signatures by July 5, 2018. In Missouri, an initiative did not collect the required number of signatures before the deadline of May 6, 2018.


text: Colorado Proposition 113, a ballot measure seeking to overturn the Colorado's adoption of the compact, was on the November 3, 2020 ballot; Colorado's membership was affirmed by a vote of 52.3% to 47.7% in the referendum.


text: Political analyst Nate Silver noted in 2014 that all jurisdictions that had adopted the compact at that time were blue states (all of the states who have joined the compact then and since have given all of their electoral college votes to the Democratic candidate in every Presidential election since the compact's inception), and that there were not enough electoral votes from the remaining blue states to achieve the required majority. He concluded that, as swing states were unlikely to support a compact that reduces their influence, the compact could not succeed without adoption by some red states as well. Republican-led chambers have adopted the measure in New York (2011), Oklahoma (2014), and Arizona (2016), and the measure has been unanimously approved by Republican-led committees in Georgia and Missouri, prior to the 2016 election.


text: On March 15, 2019, Colorado became the most "purple" state to join the compact, though no Republican legislators supported the bill and Colorado had a state government trifecta under Democrats. It was later submitted to a referendum, approved by 52% of voters.


text: In April 2021, reapportionment following the 2020 Census caused NPVIC members California, Illinois and New York to lose one electoral vote, and Colorado and Oregon to gain one, resulting in the total electoral votes represented by members to fall from 196 to 195.


text: On February 17, 2021, the North Dakota Senate passed SB 2271, "to amend and reenact sections ... relating to procedures for canvassing and counting votes for presidential electors" in a deliberate—albeit indirect—effort to stymie the efficacy of the NPVIC by prohibiting disclosure of the state's popular vote until after the Electoral College meets. Later the bill was entirely rewritten as only a statement of intent and ordering a study for future recommendations, and this version was signed into law.


text: The table below lists all state bills to join the NPVIC introduced or otherwise filed in a state's current or most recent legislative session. This includes all bills that are law, pending or have failed. The "EVs" column indicates the number of electoral votes each state has.