State Sen. John Damoose and state Rep. Cam Cavitt are entitled to their own opinions, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

The compact (Senate Bill 126 and House Bill 4156) is a nonpartisan reform with bipartisan support. Of course, nobody mentioned that fact during a recent one-sided Alpena Community College forum.

Republicans supporting it include two former speakers of the state House, four former Senate majority leaders, a former lieutenant governor, two former Michigan Republican Party chairmen, and dozens of legislators. Even former President Donald Trump supports a popular vote. In 2018, he said: “I would rather have the popular vote because it’s, to me, it’s much easier to win the popular vote.”

The compact preserves the Electoral College as the Founding Fathers intended.

“The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact does not amend, alter, abolish or otherwise abrogate the constitutional framework for electing a president of the United States,” Hillsdale College professor Gary Wolfram said before the House Elections Committee. “It is a compact among the states meant to overcome the shortcomings of the winner-take-all method adopted by all of the states except Maine and Nebraska to decide how their electors will vote within the Electoral College.”

If enacted, the compact would only change Michigan’s winner-take-all method. To claim otherwise is to deny what the Constitution says.

Cavitt explained his opposition using a false claim that Michigan “won’t have a seat at the table” in a presidential election under a national popular vote. He also said “our electoral votes should be distributed as they are now.” Both of those claims are hypocritical, because the freshman representative cosponsored two bills in the Legislature (House Bills 4216 and 4217) that allow the Democrat-orchestrated redistricting commission to determine the outcome of two or three consecutive presidential elections through simple gerrymandering of congressional districts. Cavitt either doesn’t know what legislation he introduces, or he was being disingenuous with voters.

It is also preposterous to claim that big states would control the outcome.

Ignoring the fact that California has more registered Republican voters than any other state, 82% of Americans don’t live in California and New York. It’s mathematically impossible for 18% to out-vote 82%. Similarly, it’s also false to invoke big cities. The five biggest cities are just 5.8% of the population, according to the census. In reality, one out of five voters live in rural America and one out of five voters live in the biggest hundred cities.

What Damoose and Cavitt seem to be saying is they don’t believe the presidential candidate with the most votes should win, which is ironic, because that’s how both of them won their respective races.

Over my 43 years in Republican politics, I have seen Michigan ignored by presidential candidates.

Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, no Michigan voter is disenfranchised. No voter will have their vote canceled out at the state level because their choice differed from majority sentiment in their state.

Instead, every voter’s vote will be added directly into the national count for the candidate of their choice. That will ensure that every voter in every state will be politically relevant in every presidential election, regardless of where they live.

That means we would elect a president of the United States, not a president of the Battleground States.

Saul Anuzis a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and former member of the Republican National Committee.