Counterpoint: National Popular Vote would give voters equal voice

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Our country and state were founded on the value of equal representation under the law. The candidate who gets the most votes should win an election. That's a simple principle, which should apply to the election of the president just as it applies to elections for every other office in America.

However, the loser of the popular vote has won the presidency five times, and in 14 more instances, the winner failed to receive a majority of votes. That means that in our nation's history, the winner of the presidency has had a mandate of the people just two-thirds of the time. That's not good enough, and Minnesota is taking a big step to change that.

Minnesota has long been a national leader in voter turnout. Minnesotans take our civic duty seriously. However, in presidential elections, the weight of your vote is vastly different from the weight of the votes you cast for other offices. In the races for governor or your local school board election, the candidate with the most votes wins the seat. Why is it different for our nation's highest elected office?

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact recently passed the Minnesota House and Senate as part of the State Government and Elections budget. Its aim is to guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most votes across the country. The bill has previously passed in 15 states and Washington, D.C., and has bipartisan support in every state. Once enough states to reach 270 electoral votes join, the compact will go into effect and participating states will award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, ensuring the winner with the most votes assumes the presidency.

The bill will restore stability to the American political system. Instead of candidates shaping their policy agendas to appeal to a few swing states, candidates will have to work to appeal to all voters in every state. But a great deal of misinformation is floating around regarding the effects of NPV. On May 14, Star Tribune Opinion's D.J. Tice denounced the NPV, and it is important to set the record straight ("National Popular Vote would be popular folly").

Critics of NPV twist themselves into an intellectual pretzel to justify the minority rule that the current system too often allows. They may claim, for example, that states using the autonomy that the Constitution grants them to ensure that the president gets the most votes would bring "instability." But it's hard to imagine a system that poses a greater risk to our democracy's stability and legitimacy than one that allows the second-place vote-getter to win an election, effectively nullifying the popular will.

Tice writes: "The Electoral College, by giving each state, as an autonomous political community, a role in choosing presidents, forces presidents and would-be presidents to concern themselves with diverse concerns across America." While this sounds great in theory, it has been far from the reality of our current system. USA Today compiled a report on campaign stops in the final weeks of the 2020 election cycle. A clear pattern of favorite stops in select states emerged for both candidates, with extra attention paid to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, swing states regarded as higher value. Surely, America's diverse concerns can't be summarized by the voices of three states. And make no mistake — even in swing states, candidates rarely spend time to reach small or rural communities; they focus on population centers.

Article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution leaves the power to award electors to state legislatures. The MPV bill respects, uses and maintains this power. Further, the current state-based winner-take-all system Tice defends is not the founders' system any more than NPV is. It was never discussed, debated or mentioned at the constitutional convention. When enough states determine they want a national popular vote for president, we are going to have a national popular vote for president.

What's more, the current system delivers chaos and hairsplitting lawsuits in battleground states. Courts are far more likely to pick presidents under the current system than voters. In fact, in our neighbor Wisconsin, the state was just one State Supreme Court vote away from overturning their election results, the closest any state came to succumbing to the false narrative of a "stolen election."

Plain and simple: Every Minnesota voter deserves to have an equal voice in every presidential election — and now will.

Mike Freiberg, DFL-Golden Valley, is a member of the Minnesota House.