Democrat vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was quiet on Thursday about whether he still thinks the Electoral College should be replaced with a "national popular vote" after the head of the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris, said the campaign did not back that position.
"I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote," Walz said Tuesday at a fundraiser at California Governor Gavin Newsom's (D) home.
It's not the first time Walz made such comments; he did so at a Seattle fundraiser as well.
But campaign officials for Harris and Walz said abolishing the Electoral College is not an official position of the campaign.
Fox News could not get a response from Walz Thursday about whether he stands by his remarks, but some other news outlets did get a statement from the campaign that Walz was actually trying to support the Electoral College in the remarks.
"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," a Harris campaign spokesperson said to CNN and USA Today, among other select media outlets. "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."
The calls for an end to the Electoral College started with Hillary Clinton in 2016 after she won the popular vote by more than 2 million but still lost the Electoral College.
"I think it needs to be eliminated," Clinton told CNN at the time. "I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes."
Other Democrats who have spoken out against the Electoral College process include Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD), who called it a "convoluted, antique, obsolete system from the 18th century, which these days can get you killed as nearly it did on Jan. 6, 2021."
So now the Electoral College can get you killed!
In reality, the Electoral College was instituted so that overly large states like California and Texas don't get to overrule smaller states like Rhode Island and Montana.
It only looks like Democrats are way more popular than Republicans because California and New York vote Democrat by a huge margin.
Using electoral votes evens the playing field so that rural areas have an equal say with cities in elections.
It would not be fair for cities with higher populations to get all the power in choosing national candidates, and that's why our very wise founding fathers put the Electoral College in place in the first place.
