US Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Walz "Electoral College Must Be Abolished"

Advocacy for Reforming the U.S. Presidential Election System

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and governor of Minnesota, mentioned the need to reform the presidential election system, stating that the current method focuses attention on a few swing states.

According to the political media outlet The Hill on the 9th (local time), Governor Walz said at a fundraising event held in Sacramento, California, the day before, "I think we should abolish the Electoral College system. We need a nationwide popular vote." He added, "But the world we live in is not like that," and "the Electoral College system gives certain states attention.

In the U.S. presidential election, where the president is elected through the Electoral College, the winner is not the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide but the candidate who secures a majority (at least 270) of the total 538 electoral votes allocated to the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The candidate who wins even one more popular vote in a state takes all the electoral votes assigned to that state in a winner-takes-all system (except for Maine and Nebraska). The number of electoral votes per state varies according to the state's population.

Because of this system, states that heavily lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party are not crucial to the outcome. California, a Democratic stronghold, and Texas, a Republican stronghold, are examples. Instead, the reason Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are focusing their efforts on seven battleground states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada) where the race is extremely close is clear.

The nationwide popular vote that Governor Walz refers to is simply a system like South Korea's presidential election, where the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president. Walz's concern is that the Electoral College system allows battleground states to exert excessive political influence. Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump have proposed tailored pledges to win over voters in these battleground states. Harris has expressed support for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for Pennsylvania, which relies on the natural gas industry, and both candidates have promised to exempt tip income from taxes for Nevada, where many service workers reside.

However, the general consensus is that changing the constitutionally mandated Electoral College system is not easy. According to The New York Times (NYT), abolishing the Electoral College would require amending the Constitution or states agreeing at the state level to allocate their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the overall popular vote. The Republican Party has been opposed to abolishing the Electoral College since it has not won the overall popular vote in a presidential election since George W. Bush in 2004.

Trump's camp criticized Governor Walz's recent call to abolish the Electoral College. On social media, the Trump campaign said, "He (Governor Walz) hates Article I of the Constitution. He hates the federal Supreme Court. He hates the Electoral College," and asked, "Why does he hate the Constitution so much?"

Governor Walz's spokesperson clarified that the Harris campaign does not support abolishing the Electoral College. While Vice President Harris expressed openness to discussions about abolishing the Electoral College during a TV show in 2019 when she ran for president, NYT explained that she has not mentioned reforms drastic enough to overturn the political system in this election.