With the presidential election ahead, the Electoral College will make or break who takes the presidency, but many are unhappy with that system.

More states are signing up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would allocate a state’s electoral votes to the national popular vote, effectively eliminating the Electoral College System. Currently, 16 states and the District of Columbia have signed a version of the Compact.

The presidential election is decided using the Electoral College system where each state is given electoral votes based on their population. A candidate with the most votes in a state wins that state’s electoral votes.

For the Compact to go into effect, all states that have signed up for it must combine for at least 270 electoral votes. The compact currently has 209. For a state to sign up, the Compact must be approved by the state legislature.

Minnesota joined the Compact in Feb. 2023 after Gov. Tim Walz signed the bill.

Those who support the Compact argue that the Electoral College forces presidential candidates to focus their efforts primarily on battleground states, while other states don’t receive the same attention.

Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman (D-Champlin), who authored the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bill in the Senate, said in a statement that the Compact helps strengthen our democracy by ensuring that presidential candidates visit all states, not just battleground states.

“This is about fairness and ensuring that every American’s voice is heard in our most important election,” Hoffman said in the statement.

Minnesota State Rep. Mike Freiberg (D-Golden Valley), who authored the bill in the House, said in a press release the Electoral College does not equally value all citizens’ votes and gives more importance to those in swing states. Freiberg added the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would ensure fairness in elections.

“No one’s individual vote should matter more than anyone else’s, and by joining this compact, we will take a big step to ensure fairness in our Presidential elections,” Freiberg said in the press release.

Not everyone wants to ditch the current system, according to  Save Our States founder Trent England.

England said it is necessary to keep the Electoral College because it balances the voting power any state has, as California and New York would have too much influence in deciding the winner.

England said the Electoral College forces political candidates to spread out their campaigns nationwide. This pressures Democrats and Republicans to be active in every state, not just swing states, England added.

“The electoral college forces candidates to win basically on a state-by-state basis; they have to reach out farther around the country than they would otherwise have to do, which means they wind up with a lot bigger, broader, more diverse coalition,” England said.

More conservative states will need to be convinced to join the Compact if supporters hope to hit their 270 goal.

Aaron Scherb, director of Legislative Affairs at Common Cause, said though the Electoral College forces presidential candidates to expand their campaigns nationwide, the reality is many spend most of their time in the swing states.

“Nearly all of the presidential campaign visits are to only a handful of seven states,” Scherb said. “Which have a little bit less than 20% of the population. So it means essentially 80% of Americans are kind of ignored.”

Without the Electoral College, England said it is possible that politics would become more regional and the level of election fraud suspicions would rise.

“Parties would become much more regional which could easily make them more radical or disdainful of their opponents,” England said.

Scherb said with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, voters outside of those swing states will no longer be ignored and have their voices heard.

“Presidential campaigns would have to compete for everybody’s votes, which we think would be a good thing,” Scherb said. “More voices would be heard, you know, more issues would be represented in campaigns.”

Though the Electoral College is around 230 years old, England said the founding fathers’ concerns about ensuring widespread political balance are still present today.

“The Electoral College, over the last hundred years, has been perfectly split between Republicans and Democrats winning elections,” England said, “I mean that’s pretty remarkable that we have a system that produces that kind of balance.”

Around five U.S. Presidents lost the national popular vote but won the Electoral College, including former Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush.

Scherb said the Electoral College is worth changing not only for voter representation but because of its racist beginnings. The Electoral College was created in 1787 to give more influence to Southern states who got extra electoral votes because of their large slave populations while at the same time not allowing Black people to vote.

“It’s kind of a structural inequity that’s baked into our system, along with a gerrymandering, along with a number of other kind of structural reforms, the filibuster, that are kind of extremely hard to change, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Scherb said.