On Monday Lauren Boebert, a Republican running for Congress in Colorado's 3rd district, tweeted a campaign video and introduced it by saying, "Stop Democrats from stealing our votes for President and putting Colorado's water at risk." President Trump retweeted it on the same day. She was referring to a bill signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in 2019 that added Colorado to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would give a state's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, but only goes into effect if enough states join to guarantee at least 270 electoral votes would be awarded.
The compact is aimed at avoiding the scenario in which the winner of the national popular vote does not also win the Electoral College vote, which most recently happened in 2000 and 2016. However, this legislation won't go into effect this election because only 16 states with a collective 196 electoral votes have signed on. There is also a ballot measure to repeal the law on the November ballot. In the video, Boebert said the law was "giving Colorado's votes to California," insinuating that because of California's size it would hold more influence in the election. However, the Electoral College system already incentivizes campaigns to prioritize certain states, like Florida and Pennsylvania, that have larger populations and swing voters. In the 2020 general election campaign events featuring the candidates have not been held in 37 states, Colorado included.
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Water rights and supply are recognized as big issues in Colorado. Boebert references a quote from an opinion piece by a former executive director of Colorado's Department of Natural Resources, Greg Walcher: "The threat to Colorado water is obvious." In his piece Walcher claims that the popular vote compact would take power away from Colorado and that national politicians would not focus attention on issues like water in the state if California were more electorally powerful. However, there does not seem to be direct evidence that this would be the case.
