Walz says Electoral College 'needs to go' but unlikely to happen

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz offered support for eliminating the Electoral College but acknowledged that appeared unlikely in the current political climate.

“The Electoral College needs to go,” Walz said at a fundraiser Tuesday in Sacramento, California, hosted by that state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, according to a pool report from the event. Walz, though, cast doubt that the process could be realistically changed now.

Walz’s comments are not the first time that he has advocated for a popular vote in place of the Electoral College. In 2023, as governor of Minnesota, he signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among a group of states to award their electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the popular vote.

The agreement would take effect when enough states have signed on to bypass the Electoral College. So far, the compact has been enacted by 17 states and the District of Columbia, short of the threshold of 270 electoral votes needed to activate the law.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Electoral College system has long mystified outside observers of the American political system and drawn criticism, including from former President Donald Trump, who once called it a “disaster for democracy.”

Under the system, when voters in each state choose a presidential candidate they vote for a slate of potential electors who are aligned with that choice. Those electors are chosen by political parties. Both the presidential and vice presidential candidates need a majority of the electoral votes to win — 270 votes if all 538 electors cast ballots.

Supporters of the system say it ensures that rural parts of the country and states with smaller populations are not ignored, but critics say that because most states vote predictably for one party, only a handful of competitive swing states end up seeing candidates seeking their votes.

Polling shows that a majority of Americans back abandoning the system for a direct vote for president. A Pew Research Center survey conducted from Aug. 26-Sept. 2 found more than six-in-10 Americans would prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the candidate who wins the popular vote. A little more than one-third prefer retaining the current system.

Pew found that the vast majority of Democrats favored replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote system, while Republicans were evenly divided.