The Harris campaign walked back Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s Tuesday claim that the Electoral College "needs to go," saying that it is not an official campaign position.
"I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go. We need, we need national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in," Walz said at a campaign fundraiser in California.
The campaign clarified later that the Harris-Walz ticket is not advocating for eliminating the Electoral College.
"Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College," a campaign official told CNN, adding that Walz "was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes."
Walz has made a series of verbal blunders that his campaign has had to clean up, including false claims about being present at the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. During the vice presidential debate on October 1, Walz admitted that he can be "a knucklehead at times."
During her 2020 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris said she was "open to the discussion" of abolishing 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," Harris said during a 2019 interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live.