ST. PAUL — In 2025, the Minnesota House had a rare 67-67 tie between Republicans and Democrats that resulted a delayed start to the legislative session.

State Rep. Paul Torkelson, R-Hanska, has offered a novel method of preventing further ties. He recently proposed a bill to increase the number of house representatives from 134 to 135 and cut the state Senate from 67 members to 45 members.

“The main motivation for this is avoiding ties in the future,” Torkelson said. “We’ve survived two ties, one in 1979 and the one in 2025 delayed action in the House for weeks. The Democrats were not showing up for weeks and we had to negotiate a co-chair option. It was pretty bumpy and it could have honestly been a lot worse.”

Though there have only between two ties in the House in the last 50 years, Torkelson is concerned it could happen again; especially with Minnesota being evenly divided along party lines.

Torkelson acknowledged this proposal would be a hard sell in the Senate, as it would require the state to reduce the number of state senators by 22.

The state Constitution requires the House and Senate to apportioned equally. A House district cannot be split between multiple Senate districts, and each Senate district must have the same number of House districts contained within it. The problem then comes down to math. There are 67 state senators because 67 is half of the 134 House representatives. The 135 House members are not evenly divisible by two, but 135 is divisible by three.

Torkelson said Minnesota currently has the highest number of state senators out of all 50 states. Dropping down to 45 would still put in the middle range. As an example, Wisconsin has 33 state senators and 99 representatives.

“I don’t think the proposal is unreasonable, but I understand it could have trouble getting past the Senate,” Torkelson said.

Asked about the likelihood of the bill passing, State Sen. Gary Dahms, R-Redwood said “It would never happen.”

“There is a lot of combination of things we could do to prevent ties,” Dahms said, “It is something worth talking about, but the House is going to have to solve the problem themselves.”

Torkelson said the bill has been presented in both the House and Senate. It’s currently in committee hearings on the House side. He hopes to move it out of committee next week.

“It is an idea that might not take hold right away,” Torkelson admitted. “But I do think another tie is a potential problem.”