Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.

His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.

“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. 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.”


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    • @[email protected]
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      06 months ago

      Removing the electoral college does nothing to change our two party system so I don’t understand why you think it solves billionaire class rule.

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        It absolutely does. Without Republicans gerrymandering everything to stay in the fold, they’re completely done. They’ll get bodied every election. The last time the Republicans won the popular vote was 20 years ago, and the party has radically changed since then.

        Hopefully undoing the electoral college is the first step to dismantling the two party system.

        • @[email protected]
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          6 months ago

          So thats on me, I said “does nothing to change our two party system” when I should have said “does nothing to remove our two party system”. All this does is concentrate power into the democrats which if they had no worry of winning elections would very quickly openly turn into the Billionaire Boot Licking Society overnight. We need more political parties.

          All this being said I’m not arguing against removing the electoral college, it needs to die. But Americas problems run so much deeper than the GOP

    • Lev_Astov
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      16 months ago

      And so we’ll remain until we can also get rid of the two party system. This would be a good start, but we also need to change our voting system to anything but this awful first-past-the-post system.

    • @[email protected]
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      246 months ago

      Which was the point of the EC in the first place:

      There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.

      https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes

        Could you explain this sentence please? English isn’t my first language and I can’t make sense of it.

        • @[email protected]
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          76 months ago

          White slave owners in the south didn’t want abolitionists to vote away their supremacy over blacks, and thought the EC would be a good way to make sure the abolitionist voting bloc would be kept in check.

          • @[email protected]
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            56 months ago

            History is riddled with the results of people on the right side giving so much to the losers that the losers win in the long run.

            They were monsters that treated humans like property… fuuuuuuuuck them so hard.

            And here we are, back again cuz someone didn’t smack them hard enough

            • @[email protected]
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              16 months ago

              Now we’re all still property, but must find a way to feed, clothe, home ourselves and get to our mostly underpaid jobs. It’s fine if it’s extralegal, until we’re caught or turned in.

        • @[email protected]
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          96 months ago

          Southern states owned a lot of slaves, and thought the slave owners should get to have the slave’s votes in addition to their own. They thought that if they couldn’t do that, the South couldn’t have a loud enough voice in the election.

          It’s kind of related to the 3/5th compromise.

        • @[email protected]
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          6 months ago

          Madison was saying that blacks in the south were enslaved and couldn’t vote. They made up a significant portion of the southern states population which put them at a disadvantage giving them poor representation.

    • @[email protected]
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      36 months ago

      You think the midwest will have any say in what happens in the USA without it?

      All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states. Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.

      Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.

      This is a deep issue. The founders may have been white (mostly, remember hamilton isnt an opera) and flawed but they werent stupid.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 months ago

        I want my devalued vote back. Any other rationalization is an assault on “one person one vote”.

      • @[email protected]
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        76 months ago

        Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.

        You mean to say, power will be more evenly distributed per person instead of per acre?

        I’m ok with this.

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states.

        As opposed to spending all their time in cities in swing states like they currently do? The EC is an abysmal failure at preventing candidates from ignoring huge swaths of the country. Fuck the EC. What is even dumber about the EC, is that basically every other office in the US counts all votes equally, and yet this isn’t a problem at the state/local level.

        One person, one vote. We are all born equal, all votes should be equal. Nobody is more deserving of a voice than any other.

        Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.

        That’s already the case.

      • AFK BRB Chocolate
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        46 months ago

        The flip side is that people who live in states with a big land area but relatively small population have a way oversized vote compared to people who live in high population states. Why should a small number of people in the Midwest be able to outvote the majority?

      • AngryMob
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        36 months ago

        so what? We’re talking about a national vote for president. Your specific voice gets heard through local elections, not the president. Every person should have an equal vote. Period.