Electoral College ‘needs to go,’ Walz says. Other Democratic candidates have agreed

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz recently suggested abolishing the Electoral College, echoing calls made by numerous former Democratic candidates over the years.

“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go,” Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, said during an Oct. 8 fundraiser in California, according to Politico.

“We need a national popular vote,” he added. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, also made similar statements at a previous event in Seattle, per the outlet.

Former President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, quickly responded to these remarks, writing on X, “Is (Walz) laying the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?”

A Harris-Walz campaign official later walked the governor’s comments back, telling CBS News that the campaign does not want to get rid of the Electoral College.

These kinds of statements are hardly unique among high-ranking Democrats. Many former vice presidential and presidential candidates from the party have called to do away with the Electoral College — though, unlike Walz, they didn’t do so in the middle of their campaigns.

During a 2017 interview with CNN, Hillary Clinton explicitly stated her desire to move away from the Electoral College, which is outlined in the Constitution and decides the winner of presidential elections. Voters cast their ballots for electors, which are allocated to each state based on population, and those electors go on to elect the president. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes out of 538 to win the presidency.

“I think it needs to be eliminated,” Clinton, who won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College to Trump in 2016, said. “I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes.”

She previously made the same calls in 2000, according to CBS News.

Similarly, during a 2016 sit-down with The New York Times, Al Gore said he changed his view on how the country should elect its president.

“I do think that it should be eliminated,” Gore said of the Electoral College, according to NBC News. “I think moving to a popular vote system is not without peril…(but) it would stimulate public participation in the democratic process like nothing else we could possibly do.”

Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, narrowly lost to George W. Bush in the Electoral College, despite winning the popular vote. However, he maintained his support in the system for years afterward.

Gore’s running mate, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, came out against the Electoral College much earlier.

When asked if he would scrap the current electoral system during a 2012 interview, he said, “I would, not surprisingly,” according to Politico.

“It’s kind of amazing, looking back at 2000, that there was not a whimper of an attempt to end the Electoral College,” Lieberman said. “The Electoral College was actually created by our founders to guarantee what they worried would be a mistake, protect them from a mistake by the voters. But in this country, we have confidence in the voters.”

The same year, Michael Dukakis — the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, who lost to George H.W. Bush — said he supported putting a new system in place.

During a Clark University speaking engagement, he railed against the “disproportionate influence” that a handful of swing states hold in the Electoral College System, according to the Telegram and Gazette.

This anti-Electoral College sentiment hasn’t just been expressed by Democrats who never reached the White House, either.

Former President Bill Clinton, who won election in 1992 and reelection in 1996, said he opposed the Electoral College in a 2023 interview with Bloomberg News.

And in 1977, President Jimmy Carter unsuccessfully urged Congress to abolish the country’s centuries-old electoral system and replace it with a national popular vote, according to the New York Times.

Democrats haven’t always been alone in their calls for reform either.

In November 2012, Trump — then a registered Republican — tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”

Polls have also consistently shown that the majority of Americans would prefer that the president be elected by a popular vote, not the Electoral College.

This story was originally published October 9, 2024 at 3:13 PM with the headline "Electoral College ‘needs to go,’ Walz says. Other Democratic candidates have agreed."