Tim Walz Calls for Abolishing the Electoral College, Going Beyond Harris

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota suggested at fund-raisers that he backed switching to a national popular vote. His spokesman clarified that this was not the position of Kamala Harris’s campaign.

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Gov. Tim Walz at the Democrats’ convention in Chicago. At a fund-raiser on Tuesday, he also called himself “a national popular vote guy, but that’s not the world we live in.”

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Tuesday called for abolishing the Electoral College as a means of electing American presidents, reiterating a position he has articulated in the past while he and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the heat of a campaign for the White House.

Twice during campaign fund-raisers on the West Coast, Mr. Walz said he would prefer that presidential candidates did not have to focus on a few political battlegrounds and could instead focus on winning votes from across the country.

“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a, we need a national popular vote,” Mr. Walz told donors at the Sacramento home of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “So we need to win Beaver County, Pa. We need to be able to go into York, Pa., and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nev., and win.”

Abolishing the Electoral College is generally a popular position with voters but is something that would either require a constitutional amendment or more states agreeing to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

Mr. Walz’s support of the position — in deep-blue West Coast states no less — with less than a month before Election Day risks rocking the boat for the Harris campaign as it tries to deliver a message focused on economic concerns, abortion rights and the threat of former President Donald J. Trump.

Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for Mr. Walz, said that Ms. Harris’s campaign did not support abolishing the Electoral College.

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