Governor Tim Walz was campaigning with California Governor Gavin Newsom last week when he let a little something slip.
With Harris now in the very real danger of winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College, Walz voiced his opinion on banning the Electoral College, but it appears that the Harris campaign has told him to stand down.
Talking Points…
- The Electoral College explained
- Walz suggests banning the Electoral College
- Analysis
Our Founding Fathers established the Electoral College as a compromise of the popular and congressional votes. The idea behind its establishment was that every state would be represented by a combined 538 electors, with the winning candidate needing a majority of 270 votes to win the presidency.
Each state is appointed a specific number of electors based on its total number of representatives in the House plus its two Senators. The number of House representatives is dictated by the population in the census. It is actually rather impressive that they had the foresight to put this system in place to ensure that larger states would not dominate any given election and that, at any time, varying states would become key factors in who wins. Without this system, our presidential elections would more or less be dictated by the vote in California, New York, Florida, and Texas. It also mirrors the influence of each state in how legislation is passed.
In our nation's history, there have only been a handful of elections where the Electoral College winner was not the popular vote winner, all of them Republican, and the last being Donald Trump in the 2020 election. That was also the case in 2000 when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore, which is why Democrats are so adamant they want the EC banned. In fact, Walz echoed that sentiment when he was campaigning with Newsome, stating:
"I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote."
Now, this is a popular Democrat sentiment, so I am sure Walz felt confident in both saying it and having the backing of Harris for having said it. There was no reason to think otherwise, considering Harris has expressed interest in abolishing the EC in the past. For instance, during the 2020 campaign, Harris stated:
"I'm open to the discussion.
"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, so I'm open to the discussion."
The campaign, however, struck down the notion after Walz's statement blew up in the media. The campaign immediately posted what Tim Walz "actually" meant, stating:
"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.
"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."
That campaign statement is a complete and utter spin, but if you notice, Walz has been silent on this ever since. Harris does not want to give the impression that she is going to do anything to the Constitution during an election cycle. However, Democrats have attacked this in the past, to the point that former presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Waren even presented legislation to abolish the EC during that last election cycle.
To be blunt, the EC saves this country from allowing any large one-party-dominated states to dictate the outcome of the presidential election, which is its exact purpose. Those who cannot comprehend that or try to fight it have no fundamental concept of what our Framers and Founders thought when they wrote our Constitution. The day the EC falls, our constitutional republic will also fall.
