Amid the excitement of the blue wave’s flashier victories in last week’s midterm elections—Blexas, Bliowa, and Blansas, anyone?—Democrats also quietly set themselves up for one of the biggest potential changes in the history of American politics: ending the Electoral College.

The Electoral College system was designed to ensure small states aren’t passed over by presidential campaigns, but in the process, it gives those often Republican-leaning states disproportionate control over presidential elections. It’s led to five cases in U.S. history where a candidate won the popular vote but lost the presidency, most recently in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

That’s why since 2006, some states have been working toward the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement to ensure that the candidate who wins the popular vote also wins the presidency. That two-decade effort could finally pay off, thanks to five states that flipped blue in the midterms.

For the compact to take effect, laws to join it must first be enacted by states whose combined electoral votes are enough to secure a presidential election. The 19 jurisdictions that have already passed laws pledging their votes to the compact (18 states and the District of Columbia) have a combined 222 electoral votes, still 48 shy of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency.

That’s where five newly blue states come in. Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania now have Democratic majorities in their state legislatures, matching their Democratic governors. Nevada did the opposite, flipping its governorship from red to blue while maintaining a Democratic legislative majority.

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