The Morning: Tim Walz wants to get rid of the electoral college

On Tuesday, at a fundraiser with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz expressed his support for throwing out the Electoral College as the way America elects presidents.

“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a, we need a national popular vote,” said Walz.

And, just in case you thought it was simply a random thought, Walz said it again on Tuesday at another event.

Kamala Harris’ campaign operation was quick to note that abolishing the Electoral College was NOT an official position — although she did say in 2019 she would be open to the idea.

It’s sort of an odd issue to throw into the mix this close to the election, candidly, and my guess is that Walz was just freelancing.

Either way, it ain’t gonna happen.

There are two paths to getting rid of the Electoral College and choosing our presidents based solely on popular vote:

1. Two-thirds of the House and Senate pass a measure to do so which is then ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures.

2. Something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is an agreement among states that they will award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the popular vote in their state nationally. To date, states totaling just over 200 electoral votes have passed legislation to this end. But unless and until they can add enough states to get to 270 electoral votes, the laws don’t go into effect. And don’t really matter.

The problem with both of these proposed fixes is that they need Republicans — and Republican-controlled legislatures — to go along with them. And there is no way that will happen right now because GOPers know that the Electoral College favors them and gives them a much better chance of winning the White House than the popular vote.

Consider this: Five times in American history has the winner of the popular vote not won the Electoral College and therefore not been elected president. It happened 3 times in the 19th century, 0 times in the 20th century and it’s already happened twice in the first 24(!) years of the 21st century. And it could well happen again on November 5.

Which mean that three times in 24 years, the Democratic presidential nominee won the popular vote and the Republican nominee got elected president.

Republicans don’t want to change a system that’s working that well for them.

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