Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced Monday at a CNN town hall in Mississippi that she wants to get rid of the Electoral College.
“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,” she said at the town hall hosted at Jackson State University. Warren announced her bid for the 2020 presidency on February 9.
“Come a general election, presidential candidates don’t come to places like Mississippi, they’ll come to places like California and Massachusetts because you’re not the ‘battleground’ states,” Warren said, explained her reasoning.
Those who oppose getting rid of the Electoral College argue that future elections would be decided in a handful of populous states like California and New York, permanently disenfranchising voters in smaller states.
“The Electoral College preserves federalism,” explained Julia Shaw at The Heritage Foundation. “It requires a presidential candidate to win simultaneous elections across 50 states and the District of Columbia.”
Mississippi, a smaller state population-wise, ranked 31st for total votes (1,206,357) in the 2016 presidential election. The top 15 states generated more than 90 million, well over half of the 136 million nationwide total. Warren did not elaborate how leaving the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote would make Mississippi more attractive for presidential campaign visits.
Warren also spoke of other policy proposals during Monday’s open forum, including the relocation of Confederate statues to museums and “a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and makes sure that vote gets counted.”
Warren also talked about reparations, pledging support for a commission to study the issue “so that our nation can do what’s right and begin to heal.”
The senator did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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