Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, is calling to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote, claiming that the centuries-old system “needs to go.” 

“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go,” he said during a campaign fundraiser with Governor Newsom on Tuesday, according to pool reporters. “We need a national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in.”  

The Democratic vice presidential nominee has voiced his unfavorable view of the Electoral College before. Mr. Walz made a similar call during a previous fundraiser in Seattle, saying that he’s “a national popular vote guy,” according to pool reports. In May 2023, the Minnesota governor signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement that would dismantle the Electoral College system in favor of determining the presidency via a national popular vote. 

His comments come as Democrats worry that the Harris-Walz campaign could be a repeat of 2016, when Secretary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million ballots but lost out to President Trump in the Electoral College. The same thing happened in 2000 when Vice President Gore beat out President George W. Bush on the popular vote but failed to secure the necessary 270 electoral votes. 

Officials for the Harris-Walz campaign, however, have since assured that eliminating the Electoral College is not an official campaign position. 

“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,” a campaign official told CNN. 

Vice President Harris, for her part, has expressed being “open to the discussion” of doing away with the Electoral College. “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,” she said in 2019 during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel. 

Mr. Walz’s comment struck a chord with Republicans, who speculated that the Minnesota Governor might be setting the stage to question a potential Trump victory. A campaign secretary for Trump, Karoline Leavitt, took to X to question whether Mr. Walz was “laying the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate.”