During a California fundraiser at Governor Gavin Newsom’s home in Sacramento, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz advocated for eliminating the Electoral College, stating that “we need a national popular vote.”
“I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go,” the Democratic vice-presidential candidate said. “But that’s not the world we live in. So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win.”
The Trump campaign and prominent Republicans quickly seized on the comments, accusing Walz of trying to cast doubt on the results of a potential Trump victory.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned if Walz was attempting to lay “the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?” in a social media post. A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign clarified in a statement that Walz “believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket. He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes.
And, he was thanking them for their support, which is helping fund those efforts.”
A campaign official further clarified that getting rid of the Electoral College is not a position the campaign holds.
Walz on dismantling Electoral College
The comment from Walz, and the swift clarification, comes just days after an interview in which his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he needs to be more careful when he speaks.
“I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer. I will tell you that,” Walz said in a press gaggle last week.
Changing the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment, as it was established by the Constitution. However, calls to do so have gained traction in some Democratic circles, particularly after the 2016 presidential election when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes but lost the electoral vote to Trump. A similar situation occurred with former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race.
A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that 63% of Americans favor the election being decided by who wins the popular vote, not the Electoral College system. In the Electoral College system, there are a total of 538 electoral votes, divided among the states in a way that mirrors each state’s congressional delegation, with one vote allocated for each member of the House, plus two more for the two senators. Most states have a winner-take-all system, which means that all of the state’s electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in that state.
