At a California fundraiser hosted at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home Tuesday in Sacramento, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz advocated for repeal the electoral college systemsaying that “we need a national popular vote.”
“I think we all know the electoral college has to go,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee 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 to York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. Reno, Nevada and win.”
The comments were immediately supported 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 wins in November.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned whether Walz was trying to lay “the basis for declaring that President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?” in an X position.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said that “Walz believes that every vote is important in the Electoral College and is honored to travel the country and the battleground states that are working to gain support for the Harris-Walz He commented to a crowd of strong supporters how the campaign was made to win 270 electoral votes and thanked them for their support that helped finance these efforts.
Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a campaign position, a campaign official said.
Walz’s comment, and the quick clarification, comes just days after telling Bill Whitaker on “60 Minutes” that his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he should be more careful when he speaks.
Since being thrust into the national spotlight, Minnesota’s governor faced an exam about his misrepresentations of his military status as he retired from the Army National Guard as its location when pro-democracy protests broke out in China and Hong Kong in 1989.
“I’m talking like everybody else is talking. I need to be more clear. I’ll tell you that,” Walz told CBS News at a press conference last week.
The Electoral College was established by the Constitution, so the change would require a constitutional amendment. But calls to do so have gained traction in some Democratic circles, as after 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes, but lost the electoral vote to Trump. The same thing happened to former vice president Al Gore in the presidential race of 2000. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans favor elections 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 reflects 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.
Mary Cunningham contributed to this report.
