Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda

Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.

His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.

“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. 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.”

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      • @[email protected]English
        3•3 months ago

        Appreciate the links. This is kind of my thing.

        Edit: As a big Ranked Choice voting advocate, this was a interesting and informative read. I never did think about this particular situation:

        RCV doesn’t take all rankings from all ballots into account and so is not the most accurate way of counting ranked ballots. If your first choice candidate is eliminated in later rounds your second, third, or fourth choices may never be counted. (Ranked Pairs, Schultz, and Bucklin Voting are much more accurate ways to count ranked ballots.)

        I will need to go over this a few more times, but it seems I am going to switch my preference to STAR as well because of your comment.

        Really anything other then First-past-the-post will do, but it’s nice to look ahead and plan for a future where people are free to vote for who best represents them.

        Thanks again.

        • @Olgratin_MagmatoeEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          The sneaky thing about RCV that the second link points out is the the fact that RCV doesn’t actually eliminate the spoiler effect. A way to think about is that RCV is idential to FPTP, just done over several instant rounds. So it has some of the same issues, just lessened.