Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael, and several GOP members stand in protest to procedural rules on the Senate Floor as the 2024 Session draws to a close. Photo by A.J. Olmscheid, Senate Media Services.
A Republican senator is proposing an amendment to the state Constitution that would radically alter the structure of the Senate and effectively lock in Republican control of the chamber for the foreseeable future.
Like the House, the Senate is currently apportioned by population, ensuring that each senator represents a similar number of Minnesotans. But SF 696, authored by Eric Lucero of Saint Michael, would assign one senator to each Minnesota county, creating a legislative body with 87, rather than 67 members.
The change would dramatically shift the balance of power in the Senate toward voters in small, rural counties. The 1.3 million residents of Hennepin County, for instance, would have the same amount of representation as the 3,000 residents of Traverse County.
A single voter in Traverse County, in other words, would have as much influence over the Senate as 433 voters in Hennepin County.
Voters in rural counties overwhelmingly support Republican candidates. While Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris won 51% of the statewide popular vote, she carried just nine out of the state’s 87 counties. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar beat her Republican opponent by 16 points statewide, but won only 21 counties.
Those lopsided margins mean that, barring a massive political realignment, a Senate apportioned by county would likely remain in Republican control for decades to come.
The measure has attracted no co-sponsors this session and has virtually zero chance of passing the divided Legislature, or of gaining majority public support as a ballot question.
But county commissioners in rural parts of the state have previously expressed interest in such a proposal, and Republican Rep. Krista Knudson of Lake Shore last year told the Detroit Lakes Tribune that she would draft a House bill to that effect during the 2025-2026 session.
Rachel Aplikowski, a Senate Republican press secretary, said Lucero “introduced this bill before and it’s just to make the Minnesota Legislature look like the US. Congress, where representation in the House is based on population and in the Senate is based on geography.”
But the U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled that state legislative chambers must be apportioned by population, and that doing otherwise violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
In 1964, the court ruled in Reynolds vs. Sims that “the Equal Protection Clause requires substantially equal legislative representation for all citizens in a State regardless of where they reside.”
“Legislators represent people, not trees or acres,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the 8-1 majority. “Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests… it is inconceivable that a state law to the effect that, in counting votes for legislators, the votes of citizens in one part of the State would be multiplied by two, five, or 10, while the votes of persons in another area would be counted only at face value, could be constitutionally sustainable.”
Lucero’s proposal is “flatly unconstitutional” and “profoundly anti-democratic,” according to Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former official in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. “There’s no particular principle for representing each county equally other than the raw desire for power in less-populated counties, subjecting more-populated counties to permanent minority status.”