Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz argued Tuesday that the US needs to do away with the Electoral College as Democrats worry about a repeat of 2016 that would see the Harris-Walz campaign winning the popular vote but not the presidency.
“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go,” Walz said at a campaign fundraiser hosted at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home on Tuesday, according to pool reporters in the room. “We need a national popular vote that is something. But that’s not the world we live in.”
Walz has long been vocal in his belief that the Electoral College system, which decides the presidential winner, should be nixed in favor of the popular vote.
At an earlier fundraising event in Seattle Tuesday, Walz called himself “a national popular vote guy” and added “But that’s not the world we live in,” according to the New York Times.
Walz and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have been focusing on a handful of battleground states that will likely decide who becomes the next president under the Electoral College system.
Democrats have grown concerned that Harris could win the popular vote but not enough electoral votes to win the election.
Twice in recent history, the candidate whom most Americans voted for lost the election, and both times they were Democrats.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million votes but lost the White House to Donald Trump as she failed to get the necessary 270 electoral votes.
And in 2000, Al Gore earned about half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but Bush was elected president by winning more electoral votes.
More than six in ten Americans would rather the president be chosen based on the person who wins the most votes nationally than through the Electoral College system, according to a Pew Research study published last month.
However, the vice president’s campaign attempted to distance itself from Walz’s statements Tuesday with Election Day less than a month away.
“Governor 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,” a Walz spokesperson said in a statement to the Times. “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 that is helping fund those efforts.”
During Harris’ first presidential run in 2019, she said she was “open to the discussion” of throwing out the Electoral College during an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” but she has not made any similar remarks in her second run.
The Post has reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign.
More conservative Republicans are more likely to support keeping the Electoral College system in place, according to the same Pew Research study.
The Trump campaign attacked Walz’s bold calls for its deletion on X Tuesday, asking why he “hate[s] the Constitution so much?”
Congress would ultimately need to vote to abolish the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote — which is unlikely to happen in the near future.
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