You can add Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., to the list of high-profile Democratic lawmakers who have voiced their support recently for eliminating the Electoral College.
The 2020 hopeful was asked this week during a CNN town hall whether he approves of calls to reform how presidents are elected in the United States.
“My question is: Do you believe that there should be some type of reform to the Electoral College, or should it remain as it is?” an audience member asked the senator.
Booker responded, “I believe very simply that in presidential elections, the person with the most votes should be the president of the United States. But I want to tell you, for us ever to get to a point where we can address that issue, we have got to win this next election under the rules that are there now.”
Booker makes it at least five Democratic White House contenders who’ve either flirted with the idea of doing away with the Electoral College or have called outright for its abolition.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said this month, “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.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also said this month, “These are archaic relics of a bygone age. We need progress. We also need democracy, which is one person, one vote. I’ve never understood why people who want to block progress like [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell get one and half votes and people who want [to] go defeat climate change only get one.”
Earlier, in January, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg also called for the abolition of the Electoral College.
“Well, first of all, 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 in an interview with CBS’ “This Morning.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., meanwhile, has taken a somewhat milder approach, saying she’s “open to the discussion” of eliminating 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,” she told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel.
It’s not all “Death to the Electoral College!” from Democratic 2020 candidates, though. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang of New York has come out in opposition specifically to the idea that the popular vote should decide U.S. presidential elections.
“The problem with deciding presidential elections via popular vote is that candidates would naturally campaign in urban areas with big media markets and their policies would follow suit,” he tweeted on March 17. “Better to have proportional electoral college votes in each state so you campaign everywhere.”
