At a California fundraiser held Tuesday at Governor Gavin Newsom’s home in Sacramento, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz advocated abolishing the Electoral College systemstating that “we need a national popular vote.”
“I think we all know the Electoral College has to go,” the Democratic vice presidential candidate said. ‘But that’s not the world we live in. So we have to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We have to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. Reno, Nevada and win.”
The comments were immediately seized upon by the Trump campaign and prominent Republicans, who accused Walz of trying to cast doubt on the results of a victory for former President Donald Trump if Trump were to win in November.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned whether Walz was trying to “lay the groundwork to claim that President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?” in an X message.
In a statement to CBS News, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said: “Walz believes every vote matters in the Electoral College and is honored to travel the country and battleground states to earn support for the Harris Walz He commented to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign was designed to win 270 electoral votes and he thanked them for their support that is helping fund these efforts.
Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a campaign position, a campaign official said.
Walz’s comment and quick clarification will come within days after he told Bill Whitaker on “60 Minutes,” his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he needs to be more careful when he speaks.
Since being thrust into the national spotlight, the governor of Minnesota has had to deal with a critical eye about his misrepresentations of his military status regarding when he retired from the Army National Guard as well as his whereabouts When pro-democracy protests broke out in China and Hong Kong in 1989.
“I speak the way everyone speaks. I need to be clearer. I’ll tell you that,” Walz told CBS News in a press conference last week.
The Electoral College was established by the Constitution, so changing it would require a constitutional amendment. But calls for this have gained momentum in some Democratic circles, such as after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes in 2016 but lost the electoral vote to Trump. The same thing happened to former Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 presidential race. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 63% of Americans support having the election decided by who wins the popular vote, and not by the Electoral College -system.
In the Electoral College system, there are a total of 538 electoral votes, distributed among the states in a manner that reflects each state’s congressional delegation, with one vote allocated to each member of the House, plus another two for the two senators. Most states have a winner-take-all system, meaning that all of the state’s electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.
Mary Cunningham contributed to this report.
