Campaign Does Damage Control After Tim Walz Says He Wants to Radically Change Election Rules
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has distanced itself from comments made by her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who suggested that the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of a national popular vote. During a campaign event, Walz expressed the need for a national popular vote, acknowledging that while the Electoral College currently exists, they are focusing on swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada to secure the presidency.
The Electoral College, established by the Founders to ensure smaller states have a voice in presidential elections, allocates votes based on state population and gives each state two votes for its senators. Historically, the winner of the popular vote has usually also won the Electoral College, although there have been instances where this did not occur, notably in the elections of 2000 and 2016.
In response to Walz’s remarks, the Trump campaign questioned whether he was undermining the legitimacy of a potential Trump victory. Walz has supported legislation in Minnesota to allocate its Electoral College votes based on the national popular vote, a move adopted by several other states as well. After Walz’s comments, Harris’s campaign reaffirmed that every vote in the Electoral College matters, emphasizing their strategy to win the necessary electoral votes.
Earlier, Harris had indicated her openness to discussing the abolition of the Electoral College, reflecting ongoing debates within the Democratic Party about reforming the electoral process.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign sought to distance itself from remarks running mate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota made in California about ending the Electoral College vote for president in favor of a straight popular one.
“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go,” Walz said at a campaign fundraiser with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday afternoon, according to pool reporters in the room, Politico reported. “We need a national popular vote that is something. But that’s not the world we live in.”
Walz then added, in light of the Electoral College system, he and Harris are hitting swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, in their bid to win the presidency next month.
The Founders established the Electoral College vote in the Constitution to ensure smaller population states would also have a say in who would become president. Each state is allotted votes based on the number of House members it has, which is based on population.
States also receive two votes for the two senators each state has. So for example California, the nation’s most populous state, has 54 votes, while states like Alaska, Delaware and North Dakota just have three.
The winner of the popular vote for president is usually the winner of the Electoral College, as well, but there have been five times in U.S. history when this wasn’t case, the two most recent being 2000 and 2016, when Democrats Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College.
In 2016, Donald Trump won 304 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 227, but the latter won the popular vote, approximately 65.9 million to Trump’s 63 million.
Clinton was particularly able to run up the score in Democratic large population bastions like California and New York, where she beat Trump by about 3.4 million and 1.5 million, respectively. So the total in California alone is well above Clinton’s 2.9 million margin of victory in the popular vote.
In response to Walz’s remarks, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt asked in a post on X if Walz was attempting to lay “the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?”
Is Tampon Tim laying the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate? https://t.co/E8konqFN82
— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) October 8, 2024
In 2023, Walz signed a bill into law as part of the National Popular Vote initiative that would require all of Minnesota’s Electoral College votes to be cast for the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who the majority in his state voted for.
Sixteen other states have passed similar legislation in recent years, according to the National Popular Vote website. It is a way to try to bypass the constitutional amendment process. The pact would likely be challenged in court if the requisite number of states needed to reach 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency ever sought to implement it.
Politico reported that the Harris campaign released a statement soon after Walz made his comments, saying, “Gov. 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 that is helping fund those efforts.”
During a 2019 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Harris, then a U.S. senator from California, said she was “open to the discussion” of ending the Electoral College, after fellow then-presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called for it.
“There’s no question that the popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who’s the president of the United States, and we need to deal with that, so I’m open to the discussion,” she said at the time.
Last month at a fundraiser at the New York home of investor Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, Walz said: “I am hopeful on this country, but I’m also a pragmatist and a realist,” according to Politico.
“That’s the electoral college system, the way it’s set up, and the states that we’re vying for are incredibly close,” he added.
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