Walz says “Electoral College needs to go,” but campaign says that’s not its position

At a California fundraiser hosted at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz advocated for doing away with the Electoral College system, stating that “we need a national popular vote.”

“I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go,”  the Democratic vice presidential candidate said. “But that’s not the world we live in. 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.”

The comments were immediately seized on by the Trump campaign and prominent Republicans, who accused Walz of attempting to throw the results of a victory by former President Donald Trump into question if Trump were to win in November.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned if Walz was attempting to lay “the groundwork to claim 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 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. 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.” 

Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a position the campaign holds, a campaign official said. 

The comment from Walz, and the swift clarification, comes just days after he told Bill Whitaker on “60 Minutes” that his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he needs to be more careful when he speaks.

Since being thrust into the national spotlight, the Minnesota governor has faced scrutiny about his misrepresentations of his military status regarding when he retired from the Army National Guard as well as his whereabouts when pro-democracy protests broke out in China and Hong Kong in 1989. 

“I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer. I will tell you that,” Walz told CBS News in a press gaggle last week.

The Electoral College was established 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 occurred to former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans favor the election being decided by who wins the popular vote, not the Electoral College system.

In the Electoral College system, there are a total of 538 electoral votes, divided among the states in a way that mirrors each state’s congressional delegation, with one vote allocated for each member of the House, plus two more for the two senators. Most states have a winner-take-all system, which means that all of the state’s electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.

Mary Cunningham

contributed to this report.