Project 2025 is a structural undoing of the "Spirit of 1776." It fundamentally undermines the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in the following areas: democratic representation, equality, liberty, and checks/balances. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) restores the founding ideals of civic equality.
Spirit of 1776 – Rejected by Project 2025, Embraced by NPVIC
Project 2025 is a manifesto that fundamentally rejects the "Spirit of 1776," it replaces the founding ideals of decentralized liberty, civic equality, and resistance to authoritarian rule with a blueprint for a highly centralized, imperial presidency. The 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” operates not as a preservation of 1776, but as its structural undoing.
The primary arguments positioning Project 2025 as a rejection of the original American revolutionary principles, follow:
Swapping Rebellion Against Monarchy for the "Imperial Presidency": The American Revolution was to overthrow the overreaching, centralized authority of a single ruler (King George III) and to establish a system of strict checks and balances. Project 2025 seeks to drastically expand executive power. It advocates for the Unitary Executive Theory, which places the entirety of the executive branch, including independent regulatory bodies—under direct presidential control.
Dismantling the Separation of Powers: The Framers deliberately fragmented government authority across three branches to prevent any single entity from usurping total control. The Project 2025 blueprint encourages the executive branch to bypass congressional intent. For example, it outlines strategies to unilaterally reallocate federal funds and deploy the military domestically via the Insurrection Act, effectively eroding legislative and judicial counterweights.
Replacing a Merit-Based Civil Service with a Loyalty-Based Bureaucracy: Early American governance sought to transition away from the European "spoils system," where governance depended on royal patronage and absolute fealty to the Crown. A central pillar of Project 2025 is the revival of "Schedule F," a classification mechanism allowing the president to strip civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees. Critics argue that converting apolitical experts into political appointees establishes a modern-day system of political patronage that demands absolute loyalty to the executive, running counter to Enlightenment-era principles of public accountability.
Narrowing the Scope of Liberty and Universal Rights: The Declaration of Independence asserted that all individuals possess unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Though flawed in execution, it established a trajectory toward expanding individual self-determination. Human rights advocacy groups emphasize that Project 2025 outlines a highly prescriptive, state-sanctioned vision for American society. By utilizing federal machinery to restrict reproductive freedoms, rollback LGBTQ+ protections, and legally enforce a specific traditionalist religious framework, critics argue the project replaces individual liberty with state-enforced moral conformity.
While proponents claim the Project 2025 as a necessary reclamation of national sovereignty, opponents see it as a structural counter-revolution that swaps the foundational principles of American democracy for centralized authoritarianism.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) and Project 2025 represent opposite approaches to American democracy, differing fundamentally in their views on voter enfranchisement, states' rights, and the balance of political power.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) aligns with the democratic ideals of the "spirit of 1776" by ensuring the president is chosen directly by all citizens. This restores foundational principles of the American Revolution—popular sovereignty and political equality—by guaranteeing every voter's ballot carries the exact same weight, regardless of where they live.
Reclaiming "Consent of the Governed" :The Declaration of Independence asserts that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". In modern presidential elections, the winner-take-all Electoral College system means millions of votes are effectively nullified if a candidate loses a specific state. By transitioning to a national popular vote, the NPVIC ensures every single citizen’s voice directly contributes to the national outcome, honoring the revolutionary promise that true authority comes from the people.
Ensuring "All Men Are Created Equal": The 1776 spirit is rooted in the ideal of fundamental equality. Currently, the Electoral College creates a system of unequal representation where a voter in a swing state holds disproportionate sway over the presidency, while voters in safe partisan states are ignored. The NPVIC restores this ideal by making one person's vote equal to any other person's vote nationwide.
Fulfilling the Promise of "No Taxation Without Representation": The core grievance of the Revolutionary era was being subjected to laws and taxes without having a voice in the legislature. Today, an American living in a deeply red or blue state is effectively disenfranchised when it comes to the nation's highest office. By pooling the voting power across states, the NPVIC ensures that every American participates in electing the commander-in-chief, eliminating modern-day electoral disenfranchisement.
The NPVIC: Leverages federalism to achieve a national goal. Using Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives state legislatures the authority to direct the appointment of their electors, states collaboratively enter into a binding compact to reflect the will of the entire American electorate.
NPVIC is an agreement among U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the overall popular vote in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. It is considered a pragmatic, voluntary state-based initiative because it aims to ensure the winner of the national popular vote wins the presidency without requiring a constitutional amendment, operating instead within the existing Electoral College framework by utilizing states' constitutional authority to appoint electors. If enough states join the NPVIC to reach 270 electoral votes, the United States will effectively shift from a winner-take-all (WTA) regime to a national popular vote system for electing the President.
With Virginia’s adoption, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been adopted by eighteen states and the District of Columbia, which collectively hold 222 electoral votes. The compact requires 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 total) to take effect. It currently needs forty-eight more electoral votes to become active.
In 2026, NPVIC will be a relevant issue in several state elections, particularly in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As the compact needs forty-eight more electoral votes to reach the 270-vote threshold, these purple or contested states are key battlegrounds where legislative control could determine whether they join the nineteen jurisdictions already signed on.”
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
