Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has called for the abolition of the Electoral College system of electing US presidents and for a replacement of the popular vote system as it is practiced in all other democracies.
His comments — to an audience of party fundraisers — resonated with the sentiments of the majority of American voters, but risked derailing the campaign. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has not taken a position on the matter, though she has made similar comments in the past.
“I think we all know, the Electoral College has to go,” Walls told donors at California Gov. Gavin Newsom's home. “We need a national referendum. We have to go to York, Pennsylvania and win. We have to win from Western Wisconsin. We have to win from Reno, Nevada.
He had previously made similar comments at a separate event in Seattle, where he called himself “a national popular vote guy” while qualifying that “that's not the world we live in.”
These reports indicate an apparent democratic anomaly whereby US presidential elections are not based on who gets the most votes nationwide, but rather on who captures a majority of the 538 electoral votes across the 50 states and Washington DC.
Votes are widely distributed to reflect each state's population size, so populous California has 54 Electoral College votes, while tiny Rhode Island has just four. However, there have been rare instances of people missing the electoral college when US presidents win the Electoral College, most recently George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.
Concerns about the Electoral College system crystallize the reality that next month's race between Harris and Trump, the Republican nominee, will come down to results in a small number of battleground states where polls show them running neck-and-neck.
Most surveys give Harris a small but steady nationwide lead. Nevertheless, even if these are confirmed on polling day, Trump could return to the White House by winning enough swing states to reach 270 electoral votes.
That scenario fears Democrats will repeat the outcome of the 2016 election, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton despite receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes nationwide thanks to the Electoral College.
Walls' comments were eye-catching because he was chosen as Harris' running mate because his down-home, down-to-earth style was seen as appealing to working-class voters in the three key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
This isn't the first time that Wallace, the Minnesota governor, has advocated abandoning the Electoral College.
Last year, he signed legislation that added Minnesota to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would have required states to assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote.
Otherwise, only a constitutional amendment can change the current electoral system.
Harris-Wallace campaign officials insisted that abolishing the Electoral College was not part of its agenda.
“Governor Walls believes every vote counts in the Electoral College, and he's proud to travel the country and battleground states to drum up support for the Harris-Walls ticket,” Walls' spokesman Teddy Shawn told the New York Times.
The comments were gleefully seized upon by Trump's campaign, which is widely believed to have an advantage in the current system.
“Why Tampon Tim [Trump’s derisive nickname for Walz] Hate the Constitution so much? ” the Trump campaign posted on its official X account.
The comment ignores that Trump has been accused of calling himself a “suspension of the Constitution” in support of his lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.
A survey released last month by Pew found that 63% of American voters supported electing the president by popular vote, although support was higher among Democrats, while a small majority of Republicans favored keeping the Electoral College.
Harris said on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2019 that he was “open to the discussion” of changing the current system, adding that the popular vote had “fallen low.” But he refrained from making more definite statements on the matter.
In a 60 Minutes interview on CBS that aired Monday, the vice president said he recently told Walls, “You have to be a little careful how you say things.”
