By S.A. McCarthy
The Washington Stand
The Democratic Party’s vice presidential contender is calling for the Electoral College to be abolished. At a fundraiser with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), who Vice President Kamala Harris has named as her running mate, said, “I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go.”
Walz continued to say that the Electoral College should be replaced by “a national popular vote” because too much emphasis is being placed on a handful of battleground states. “So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win,” he said.
This is not the first time that Walz has teased the destruction of the Electoral College. At a previous fundraiser in Seattle, he dismissed the importance of the Electoral College, instead calling himself “a national popular vote guy, but that’s not the world we live in.” As governor, Walz also signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a legislative effort to award a state’s electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationally.
The Harris-Walz campaign was quick to clarify that the self-described “knucklehead” was not speaking for the campaign when he made his comments about abolishing the Electoral College. “Governor 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,” said Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann. “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,” he continued.
However, Harris herself questioned the purpose of the Electoral College when running in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2019, saying that she was “open to” doing away with the constitutionally prescribed process. “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,” Harris said at the time, as her Democratic colleagues — Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as well as then-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg — called for the Electoral College to be obliterated. Harris added, “So I’m open to the discussion.”
In comments to The Washington Stand, former Congressman Jody Hice, president of Family Research Council Action, said, “No amount of ‘election integrity’ efforts can protect or secure elections if the Electoral College is eliminated.” He explained that the Electoral College “enables citizens throughout the country to have their votes heard with equal impact.” Hice continued, “If the Electoral College is done away with, only a few of America’s largest cities would determine presidential outcomes and, in essence, the ‘heartland’ would become subservient to the will of our nation’s most populated areas. This is unacceptable and un-American.”
Responding to Walz’s comments, the Trump campaign asked, “Why does Tampon Tim hate the Constitution so much?” Walz earned the nickname “Tampon Tim” from Trump when he ordered female hygiene products be placed in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools. The Trump campaign continued, “He hates the First Amendment. He hates the Supreme Court. He hates the Electoral College. But he sure loves communist China!” Trump’s campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, asked, “Is Tampon Tim laying the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 but lost in the Electoral College, prompting her to call for the destruction of the Electoral College.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
