Under recent law, Minnesota joins states supporting shifting electoral votes to winner of national popular vote
MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's comments at a Tuesday fundraiser about the Electoral College shine a light on a longstanding debate: Should the Electoral College stay or should it go?
Walz, according to pool reports, in Sacramento said the system by which the United States chooses its presidents "needs to go" and instead elect presidents by national popular vote. A spokesman later clarified that those comments do not reflect the official position of the Harris-Walz campaign. The Trump campaign condemned the remarks.
But Minnesota did take a step — through a provision in a large elections bill last year — to allocate its electors based on who receives the most votes nationwide, known as the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact." Walz signed it.
A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win an election, securing individual states' support to reach that threshold. The 17 states in the compact, as well as Washington D.C., have agreed to allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. But that would only take effect when enough states join it.
Their benchmark is 270 electoral votes. So far the total number of electors apportioned to those states that have joined is 209.
Rep. Mike Freiberg, DFL-Golden Valley, argues the Electoral College is "undemocratic" and the compact would bring presidential elections in line with other elections for state and local offices.
"It tends to give smaller states outsized influence in presidential elections, and causes just a few swing states to kind of be the focus of presidential elections," said Freiberg, who chairs the House Elections Finance and Policy committee. "It's a way to move to a national popular vote without a change to the Constitution."
A constitutional amendment would be required to outright eliminate the Electoral College, and would require three-fourths of states to ratify it after clearing the initial procedural hurdles.
One Republican, Rep. Pat Garofalo of Farmington, signed on as a bill sponsor for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. But several other Republicans were against the proposal, including Rep. Duane Quam, R-Byron, who argued the Electoral College should remain as is and is more fair.
"The electors for the state of Minnesota should only be decided by Minnesota voters. No other voters should dictate that," Quam said in an interview.
He's sponsored legislation in the past, he said, that would change Minnesota's electoral votes distribution to reflect the outcome of each Congressional district, which mirrors Nebraska and Maine.
"I think that is the best compromise with a debate back and forth," he said.
A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found more than 63% of Americans want to move away from the Electoral College and would instead prefer the winner of the presidential election to be the candidate who got the most support nationally.
In the country's history, only five candidates have won the Electoral College but lost the national popular vote. That happened twice in the last two decades with the 2000 election of former President George W. Bush and former President Donald Trump in 2016.