At a California fundraiser held Tuesday at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home in Sacramento, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz argued for removing 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 to York, Pennsylvania, and win. We have to be in Western Wisconsin and win .We have to be in Reno, Nevada and win.”
The comments were immediately seized upon by the Trump campaign and prominent Republicans, who accused Walz of trying to call into question 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 post.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said that “Walz believes every vote counts in the Electoral College and he is honored to travel the country and battleground states to work to win of support for the Harris-Walz campaign. He was speaking to a crowd of ardent supporters about how the campaign is designed to win 270 electoral votes and thanking them for their support that helps fund these efforts.
Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a position the campaign takes, a campaign official said.
Walz’s comment and quick clarification comes just days after telling Bill Whitaker on “60 Minutes,” his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he needed to be more careful when he spoke.
Since being thrust into the national spotlight, Minnesota Gov. has undergone careful scrutiny regarding his false statements about his military status regarding when he retired from the Army National Guard as well as its location when pro-democracy protests broke out in China and Hong Kong in 1989.
“I speak like everyone else. I need to be clearer. I’ll tell you,” Walz told CBS News at a press gathering last week.
The Electoral College was created by the Constitution, so changing it would require a constitutional amendment. But calls to do so have gained traction in some Democratic circles, such as after 2016 Democratic presidential nominee 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 2000 presidential race. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 63% of Americans favor elections being decided by who wins. popular vote, not the electoral college system.
Under 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 two more for the two senators. Most states have a winner-take-all system, meaning all of the state’s electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.
Mary Cunningham contributed to this report.
