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The Harris campaign quickly stepped in and issued a statement after Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said the electoral college “needs to go” in favor of a national popular vote.
The Minnesota governor made the comments during a fundraiser at the home of California Governor Gavin Newsom in Sacramento.
“I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go,” Walz said. “But that’s not the world we live in.”
He added: “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 Trump campaign and top Republicans were quick to use the comments to suggest that Walz was attempting to sow doubt ahead of a possible Trump victory in November.
Trump campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X to ask if Walz was trying to lay “the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?”
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign told CBS News in a statement that Walz thinks “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,” the spokesperson added. “And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”
The campaign doesn’t favor removing the Electoral College, an official told the network.
The backtrack on Walz’s comments came after he said on 60 Minutes that Vice President Kamala Harris has said that he has to be more careful with his words.
“She said, ‘Tim, you know, you need to be a little more careful on how you say things,’ whatever it might be’,” Walz told the program.
Walz has faced scrutiny regarding his military record and where he was during the 1989 pro-democracy protests in China and Hong Kong.
“I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer. I will tell you that,” Walz recently told CBS.
Changing the Electoral College would need a Constitutional amendment, but there have been increasing calls for a change to take place in recent years after the Electoral College winner lost the popular vote in 2000 when George W Bush won against Al Gore, and in 2016 when former President Donald Trump won despite losing the popular vote by almost three million votes to Hillary Clinton.
Last month, the Pew Research Center revealed that 63 percent of Americans would prefer a national popular vote to decide elections rather than the Electoral College.
There are 538 Electoral College votes in total divided among the states according to their congressional delegation. Most states use a winner-take-all system, meaning that all of a state’s electoral votes go to the popular vote winner in that state.
Elizabeth MacDonald of Fox Business wrote on X following Walz’s comments that Democrats have been “accused of wanting to cement one-party rule via a mobocracy led by more populated states - like California.”
Donald Trump Jr added: “Holy s***, Walz and Kamala are radicals!”
