Warren Calls for U.S. to Scrap Electoral College
Senator Elizabeth Warren said Monday that she supports eliminating the Electoral College.
“My view is that every vote matters and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College,” Warren told the audience at a CNN town hall at Mississippi’s Jackson State University.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who announced her 2020 presidential campaign last month, noted that before a general election, candidates do not visit places like Mississippi or Massachusetts since they are not a swing states.
Warren also called for a constitutional amendment that “protects the right to vote for every American citizen and makes sure that vote gets counted.”
Hillary Clinton won almost three million more votes than President Trump in 2016, but lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency. For Democrats, the loss evoked bitter memories of 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush after an intense legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Years before the 2016 campaign, Trump himself once called for an end to the Electoral College, calling it a “disaster for a democracy” in a 2012 tweet. Despite his victory, the president said last year that he stood by that position.
“I would rather have a popular election, but it’s a totally different campaign,” he told Fox News. “You’re practicing for the 100-yard dash as opposed to the one mile. . . . I would rather have the popular vote because it’s, to me, it’s much easier to win the popular vote.”
