Let’s start with the obvious: tomorrow D.C. residents will overwhelmingly vote for President Obama. They may not give him the 93 percent of their votes they did in 2008, but let’s assume he won’t fall below the 85 percent mark. That being the case, Obama will receive the city’s three electoral votes.

But what if the presidential election ends up the way the 2000 contest did, with one candidate getting the majority of popular votes while another getting enough key states to win the Electoral College? What if Mitt Romney wins the popular vote, as some have assumed he could, but loses in the Electoral College? Well, as has always happened, Obama would still get D.C.’s three electoral votes.

That may not always be the case. As pundits and analysts use Election Day ’12 as a means to criticize the way that electors are appropriated under the current system, it’s worth remembering that in 2010 the D.C. Council passed legislation opting the city into what’s known as the National Popular Vote. Under that proposal, states agree to give their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote, instead of a state-by-state winner-take-all system that exists now.

So yes, D.C. could eventually give its electoral votes to a Republican. It won’t happen this year, though, since the National Popular Vote hasn’t reached the threshold that supporters believe is necessary to make it workable. Currently, nine states representing 132 electoral votes have jumped on to the idea (Maryland included), but it won’t take effect until enough states representing 270 votes—the standard needed for victory—similarly come on board.

The idea behind the National Popular Vote is to maintain the Electoral College while making more states competitive battlegrounds. Currently, only some seven states are true battlegrounds—Virginia included—meaning that they’ve been getting all the attention throughout this campaign.