Elizabeth Warren Joins Other 2020 Democrats in Calling for Ending the Electoral College

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the latest 2020 Democratic hopeful to call for abolishing the Electoral College and electing the president by a national popular vote.

Warren said at a CNN town hall Monday that she believes that “every vote” should matter.

"And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College," she said.

Warren told the town hall audience in Mississippi that the move would help the state because "candidates don't come to places like Mississippi" or other non-swing states during the general election.

“They also don’t come to places like California and Massachusetts because we’re not the battleground states," she said. "We need to make sure that every vote counts."

Warren joins several other Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination in calling for an end to the Electoral College after Hillary Clinton lost 304-227 despite winning the popular vote by nearly 3 million.

Fellow 2020 Dems back call:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also called for changing the Electoral College, citing Clinton’s massive popular vote win.

"Trump received 2.5 million fewer votes than Clinton, yet he'll soon be president. Clearly, in a democratic society, this shouldn't happen,” he tweeted shortly after the 2016 election.

Sanders told CNN the system was “unfair” to many states.

“What ends up happening is campaigns are basically about 16, 17 states, battleground states, in this country, and I think that's unfair to the other 30-plus states that would also like to be part of the political process,” he said.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, another 2020 hopeful, told CBS News earlier this year that the Electoral College “needs to go.”

“We’ve got to repair our democracy. The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic," he said. "We’ve got to explain our values and explain why Democrats are committed to freedom, to democracy, to security.”

States are already trying to circumvent the Electoral College:

While eliminating the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment, many states are already working to circumvent the Electoral College by joining a pact that would award each states’ Electoral votes to the popular vote winner as soon as enough states join to combine for 270 electoral votes, the threshold needed to clinch the presidency.

This month, Colorado and Delaware joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, bringing the total number of members to 12 states and Washington DC for a combined 181 Electoral votes.

New Mexico is expected to join Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, California and the District of Columbia as well.

 

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